Page:Handbook for Boys.djvu/356

Rh The territory north of the Ohio River was designated the "Northwest Territory." As soon as the public lands in this territory were thrown open to settlers, they began to pour in. Indeed, in many instances, they went ahead of the survey.

The next step taken by Congress was to pass a law, in 1787, for the government and protection of those settlers in this Northwest Territory, and in this law Congress made provision that slavery should be prohibited. Therefore, states formed in this territory had to come into the Union as free states. This was a restriction of slavery, however, which did not apply to the territory south of the Ohio, nor west of the Mississippi; so that when a new state came into the Union, formed out of either one of these territories, it became a great political factor in our government either for or against slavery.

In the passing of the years, many changes were taking place in our government, but there came a time when the people began to realize that slavery was spreading and that our government was politically divided between states that were slave and states that were free—or, in other words, that in the principle of slavery the peace and preservation of the Union were involved.

And thus it happened that the slave-holding states, not being able to live at peace in the Union, decided to go out of it, and live by themselves. The right of a state to leave the Union was called "the right of secession"—a right which the North held did not exist under the Constitution.

Nevertheless, one by one, under the leadership of South Carolina, December 20, 1860, the slave-holding states announced their secession, either by act of state legislature or in convention assembled; and on February 4, 1861, there had been formed in our government a Southern confederency. At this time the whole number of states in the Union was thirty-two, and of this number eleven entered the Southern confederacy.

The first shot was fired by the Southern confederacy on April 12, 1861, against Fort Sumter, a fortification of the Federal Government over which floated the stars and stripes. The war lasted four years, ending on April 9, 1865, when Robert E. Lee, commander-in-chid of the army of the Southern confederacy, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, commander-in-chief of the Federal army.

Abraham Lincoln The central figure in the Civil War is Abraham Lincoln—in heart, brain, and character, not only one of our greatest Americans, but one of the world's greatest men.