Several efforts were made in Congress to frame a constitutional amendment that would stop secession; but the two sides could not agree, and Lincoln opposed a compromise. When he became President he declared against secession and announced that he meant to execute the laws.

Some of his Cabinet were in favor of giving up Fort Sumter, but he finally decided to send supplies and men to hold it. The Confederate authorities therefore ordered an attack on Fort Sumter, which was taken after a few hours', bombardment. Amidst great excitement the President called for volunteers to protect the government, and four more southern states seceded. The four other border states remained in the Union, and later furnished men and aid for the war.

References Bearing on the Text and Topics

Chadwick,

Geography and Maps. See maps, pp. 403, 436-437. Causes of the Civil War, 132, 244. Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, 264, 291. Epoch Maps, nos. xii, xiii. - Fish, Am. Nationality, 356. Secondary. Brown, Lower South, 83-152.

Lothrop,

Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, chs. vii-xix. Curry, Govt. of the Confed. States, chs. i-iv, ix. — Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, 260-281; Jefferson Davis, chs. xi-xiv. Fite, Presidential Campaign of 1860. Hapgood, Abraham Lincoln, 151-208. Hart, S. P. Chase, 178-211. — Johnson, S. A. Douglas, chs. xviii, xix. - Lee, General Lee, 52-98. W. H. Seward, 203-262. Morse, Abraham Lincoln, I. chs. vi-viii. Nicolay, Outbreak of the Rebellion, 1-81. Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, II. chs. xii-xxix, III, IV. chs. i-xiii. Paxson, Civil War, chs. ii, iii. - Phillips, Robert Toombs, chs. viii, ix. - Rhodes, U.S., II. 416-502, III. 115-415. Schouler, U.S., V. 454-512, VI. I-50. Shaler, Kentucky, ch. xv. Trent, R. E. Lee, 31-48.

Sources. Am. Hist. Leaflets, nos. 12, 18. Ames, State Docs. on Fed. Rels., 310-320. Beard, Readings, §§ 143-148. Caldwell, Survey, 108-117. Century Co., Battles and Leaders, I. 7-98. — Hart, Contemporaries, IV. §§ 49-74, 76, 77, 96, 97; Patriots and Statesmen, V, 261-305.— Johnson, Readings, §§ 143–148. — Johnston, Orations, III. 230-329, IV. 16-81. — Lincoln, Works, passim. — MacDonald, Select Docs., nos. 93-96; Select Statutes, no. 1. See New Engl. Hist. Teachers' Assoc., Hist. Sources, § 87; Syllabus, 353.

Am.

References and Topics

419

Illustrative. Barton, Pine Knot (Ky. and Tenn.). — Churchill, The Crisis (Lincoln). Conway, Pine and Palm. — Fox, Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. Morris, Aladdin O'Brien. Antislavery Poems.

Whittier,

- Frank Leslie's

Pictures. Century Co., Battles and Leaders, I. Weekly. Harper's Weekly. - Wilson, Am. People, IV.

Topics Answerable from the References Above

(1) Public services of one of the following: Breckinridge; Bell; Floyd; Black; Stanton; Stephens. [§§ 265, 266] — (2) Republican convention of 1860. [§ 265]— (3) Incidents of the secession of one of the first seven seceding states. [§ 266] — (4) First Confederate Congress. [§ 266] — (5) Admission of one of the following states: Minnesota; Oregon; Kansas. [§ 267] — (6) Opinions of one of the following statesmen on compromise: Lincoln; Davis; Seward; Greeley. [§ 269] — (7) Star of the West incident. [§ 270] — (8) Public services of one of the following statesmen: Crittenden; Cameron; Bates; Welles; Smith; Blair. [§ 270] (9) Capture of Fort Sumter. [§ 271] (10) Account of the secession of one of the last four seceding states. [§ 272] - (11) War sentiment in the South in 1861. [§ 272] — (12) Secession sentiment in one of the four loyal border states. [§ 272]

Topics for Further Search

(13) Why did the Democratic convention split? [§ 265] — (14) Why did not President Buchanan stop secession? [§ 266] — (15) Northern arguments in favor of, or against, secession. [§ 267] (16) Southern arguments in favor of secession. [§ 267] — (17) Union men in the South. [§ 268] — (18) Did Fort Sumter belong to the United States in April, 1861? [§ 271] — (19) Effect of the fall of Fort Sumter on northern sentiment. [§ 272]

CHAPTER XXV

NORTH AND SOUTH IN 1861

274. POPULATION OF THE TWO SECTIONS (1861)

THE result of the Civil War depended on the relative strength of the contestants, measured in men, resources, business organization, and moral force. In population, the North, which included the West and Northwest, far surpassed its rival. In 1790 the North and the South had each 2,000,000 people; in 1830 the numbers were 7,000,000 and 6,000,000 respectively; but in 1860 the free states and territories counted 19,000,000, and the slaveholding states and territories 12,000,ooo. There were 3,500,000 foreign-born persons in the North, as against 300,000 in the seceding states; for immigrants disliked going into the South

where there were few cities and few manufactures, and where manual labor was despised.

When the crisis came, four of the slaveholding states stayed with the nineteen free states; these were Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri, with a total population of 3,100,000.

Farming and Democracy

421

Probably 500,000 of the inhabitants of these states adhered to the South; but West Virginia (not yet a state) and eastern Tennessee stood by the Union and nearly made good that loss. The total population of the region controlled by secession was therefore about 8,900,000 as against 22,100,000 for the area supporting the Union. Out of the 8,900,000, 3,500,000 were slaves and 140,000 free negroes, leaving a white population of about 5,300,000, of whom about 1,300,000 were white men between eighteen and sixty years old, presumably capable of military service. The twenty-three states that adhered to the Union contained about 5,500,000 men from eighteen to sixty years old, of whom about 500,000 were foreign-born.

275. FARMING AND DEMOCRACY

For the support of an army, the North had many advantages. Much more land was under cultivation than in the South; and farm machinery, fertilizers, and improved methods made farming more productive. Hence, as far west as southern Wisconsin, much of the country was as thickly settled and prosperous as the rural parts of New England. It was a period of rising prices in part because of the influx of gold from California. If the condition of the wage earners at any time was not satisfactory in the East, it was possible for them to take up land in the West and make a living there. The Bureau of Agriculture, established at Washington in 1862, showed how much the government appreciated the farmer.

In the South, plantations of hundreds or thousands of acres were numerous, but the South did not raise all its own food, and was buying corn and other food products in large quantities from the Northwest. The staple crop was cotton, of which the South exported a value of $191,000,000 in 1860. Most of the profits of southern farming appear to have gone to the slaveholding planters.

The rise of city and factory populations in the eastern states developed a democracy very like that of the West. The manu

facturers and heads of corporations, many of whom had risen from the ranks of labor, were now leaders in American industry. The South supposed that this was a timid class, which would never permit a war for fear of losing its profits, and that workmen and clerks were "mudsills," who could be trodden on, but would not and could not fight. Yet from such men came a great part of the victorious northern armies. In the West there was a genuine and wide-awake democracy, which knew no such

thing as family prestige

and was not controlled by the commercial class.

In the South, slaves were almost the only form of great wealth, and the 300,000 slaveholding families were as much a governing class as in colonial times. Out of those families came also nearly all the doctors, lawyers, and ministers in the South. The most numerous type of the southern white was that of the "crackers," or "poor whites," illiterate and unprogressive, but born fight

ing men. Most of them believed that the interest of slavery was their interest also, and therefore supported the planter at the polls and in the trenches. Nevertheless, the mountain whites along the west slope of the Appalachians had no slaves, hated the slaveholders, and constantly opposed them in the state governments.

276. STATE AND CITY GOVERNMENT

During the period from 1840 to 1860 the state constitutions, both North and South, grew more and more democratic,