Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/222

208 seven States which had not seceded refused to obey the requisitions upon them for troops, because the proclamation established coercion as the policy of the administration, and they would not participate in the subjugation of the Southern States. The governor of Maryland merely asked for delay. The "war governors" of the Northern States responded so earnestly to the first call of President Lincoln that thousands of men who had been held in preparation for this event began to pour toward Washington.

Quickly following the first proclamation, President Lincoln on the 19th of April proclaimed the first blockade of Southern ports from South Carolina to Texas, which was afterward extended, April 27th, to the ports of North Carolina and Virginia. Another proclamation, May 4th, called for about 40,000 volunteers for three years, and ordered an increase of the regular army by 22,000 soldiers, and of the navy by 18,000 seamen. Orders were also issued to seize all dispatches in telegraph offices; to authorize martial law with suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in certain places ; to prohibit sales of munitions of war to Southern States these and other minor measures showing that actual war was at hand. Under this policy Washington city became a military camp, and the frowning visage of war was on all the country.

The unmistakable import of all these coercive measures caused the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas; at the same time involving Missouri and Kentucky in civil war, and causing the first blood of the great struggle to flow April ipth on the soil of Maryland. Virginia seceding took possession of Harper's Ferry and the Gosport navy yard, thus acquiring a large amount of machinery and munitions, but found Fortress Monroe so well garrisoned as to make its seizure impossible. Virginia troops were rapidly organized by Maj.-Gen. R. E. Lee, and with such equipments as could be secured were posted at Harper's Ferry, Nor-