Attempts to Capture Fort Pickens

Neither section comprehended the earnestness and prowess of the other-the pluck that always distinguished the American people, North and South. Each, in its pride, felt a contempt for the other, each believing the other would not fight. This was a fatal misapprehension, and led to sad results. Each party appealed to the Almighty to witness the rectitude of its intentions, and each was quick to discover omens of Heaven's approval of its course. When, on the Sunday after the President's call for troops went forth, the first lesson in the morning service in the Protestant Episcopal churches of the land on that day contained this battle-call of the Prophet: "Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare for war; wake up the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong," the loyal people of Boston, New York, and Cincinnati said: "See! how Revelation summons us to the conflict!" and the insurgents of Charleston, Mobile, and New Orleans answered: "It is equally a call for us," adding: "See how specially we are promised victory in another Scripture lesson in the same church, which says; 'I will remove off from you the Northern Army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the East sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea. Fear not, O land! be glad and rejoice; for the Lord will do great things.'"

Two days after the President's call was promulgated, the chief of the Southern Confederacy issued a proclamation, in which, after declaring that Mr. Lincoln had announced the intention of invading the "Confederate States" for "the purpose of capturing its fortresses and thereby subverting its independence, and subjecting the free people thereof to the dominion of a foreign power," he invited all persons who felt so disposed to enter upon a course of legalized piracy called "privateering," and to depredate on the commerce of the United States. This proclamation was immediately followed by another from the President, declaring his intention to employ a competent force to blockade all the ports which were claimed to belong to the Southern Confederacy; also warning all persons who should engage in privateering under the sanction of a commission from the insurgent chief, that they would be held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy.

The "Congress of the Confederate States" had been summoned to meet at Montgomery on the 29th of April (1861), and a few days after the session began, an act was passed declaring that war existed between the seven "seceded" States and the United States, and authorized Mr. Davis to employ the power of their section to "meet the war thus commenced, and to issue to private armed vessels commissions or letters of marque and general reprisal, in such form as he shall think proper, under the seal of the Confederate States, against the vessels, goods, and effects of the Government of the United States, and of the citizens or inhabitants of the States and Territories thereof." They also offered a bounty of twenty dollars for each person who might be on board of an armed vessel of the United States that should be destroyed by a Confederate privateer-in other words, a reward for the destruction of men, women, and children. "Happily for the credit of humanity," says a historian of the war, "this act has no parallel on the statute-book of any civilized nation." Mr. Davis did not wait for this authority, but several days before the assembling of his "Congress," he issued commissions for privateering, signed by himself, and Robert Toombs, as secretary. With these hostile proclamations of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis, the great Conflict was fairly begun.