OPENING OF THE WAR. 333 at our expanse in national power! Look at our population and increase in all that makes a people great! A failure? Why, we are the admiration of the civilized world, and present the brightest hopes of mankind. "Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations, that is true; and from that comes a great part of our troubles. (Prolonged applause.) "No, there is no failure of this government yet. We have made great advancement under the Constitution, and I can not but hope that we shall advance still higher. Let us be true to our cause." Occurrences were now soon to take place which all true-hearted American citizens must forever deplore, and which the friends and supporters of republican freedom can never cease most profoundly to lament. The opening scene of the war has imparted to Charleston, the boasted commercial emporium of South Carolina, a deathless claim to the mournful yet respectful sympathy of all who admire manliness, and valor, and skill in arms, and elevated patriotism, and wheresoever the honored names of Anderson and Beauregard, and of those who were associated with either of these renowned chieftains in the memorable affair of the siege and capture of Fort Sumter shall be printed or enunciated in any of the spoken languages of earth. It is not for me to record what was done and suffered on either side in the fratricidal contest which sectional strife had at last wrought up to the shedding of American blood upon American soil, and by American hands. I shall cheerfully leave to others, to whom this grim task may prove grateful, an account of the fighting of sanguinary and wasteful battles that never should have been fought, and the description of victories won or of defeats endured, the memory of which will ever be, in my judgment, a far fitter subject for painful remembrance and poignant lamentation, than for agreeable reminiscence and patriotic rejoicing. The rival merits of illustrious military commanders on either side whose unhappy fate it was to be drawn into sanguinary conflictof Grant and of Lee, of Stonewall Jackson and Lyon, of Sherman and Joe Johnston, of Price and Thomas, of Sheridan and Ewell, and a host of bright names besides too numerous for recital, it is not probable that I shall ever undertake either to compare or portray. Should it happen hereafter that such personages as I have mentioned shall be associated upon fields of glory opened to them by our country's presiding genius upon a foreign soil, with commingled energies and blended sympathies, to maintain the venerated principles of our fathers; should it become needful that all the spotless chivalry of our whole vast country-of the North, the South, the East, and the West should go forth to vindicate the honor of republican institutions in this hemisphere against the usurping violence of imperial despotism, and no fitter pen than mine can be found to record exploits which will at the same time redound to our own country's honor, and lend encouragement and inspiration to the oppressed strugglers for freedom contending in unequal contest against the ef forts of earth's tyrants to enslave them, then shall I be prepared to render such aid as I can for the recounting of achievements, the fame of which will be as enduring as the mountains of our natal land, and as splendid as the unclouded rays of Heaven's grand luminary shining down on us from the central point of the firmament. BEGINNING OF THE WAR-LEROY P. WALKER. 335 CHAPTER XVII. Beginning of the War.-Its gross Impolicy.-Mr. Davis and his official Associates did not comprehend its true Dimensions.-Mr. Davis's several exultant Speeches after having been made President.—Striking Declaration made by the Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Pope Walker, at Montgomery, Alabama. - Mr. Lincoln's View of the physical Impracticability of Secession.-Philosophic Views of the Effects of War in general, and of Civil War in particular.—View of the existing Condition of Things as the Result of the late War.-Responsible Attitude of President Johnson, and Duty of all good Citizens to sustain him.—Short Explanation of Author's own Attitude in the beginning of the War.-The Confederate Provisional Congress.-Its extraordinary Harmony and Unanimity, and the Causes thereof.-View of the permanent Confederate Congress.-Rapid Review of Mr. Davis's Conduct as Executive Chief.-Peace Efforts in the Confederate Congress. -Their signal Failure, and the Causes thereof.-Informal Efforts of Author, in Connection with many influential Persons of the South, to make Peace in Spite of Mr. Davis, and, if need be, by a Counter-revolution.-Failure of those Efforts, and probable Causes therefor.—Author asks Passport across the Ocean, which is granted him.-Close of the War, and Remarks thereupon. WAR was now initiated by the firing upon Fort Sumter, under orders suddenly received from Mr. Davis's Secretary of War, Mr. Leroy Pope Walker, of Huntsville, Alabama, whose clear and sonorous tones had been heard, only a month or two before, in the goodly city of Nashville (up to that time still a Union-loving city), expounding the opening glories of secession. As some sprightly and vivacious urchin, who jocosely casts his lighted cracker at the heels of the way-side passenger, whom he expects to see startled and affrighted with the noise of the unlooked-for explosion, or, to speak a little more classically, as the fabled son of Phœbus, who is reported as mounting the blazing chariot of the sun, audaciously seizing the reins, and driving the celestial steeds amain with furious celerity along the ethereal pathways, until the whole heavens were set on fire, so Mr. Davis's enterprising war secretary embraced with eagerness the opportunity which his august chief had now so unwisely afforded to him of plunging his native land, most causelessly and madly, into a war more wasting and bloody than any which this western hemisphere had heretofore experienced. Let us pause for a moment, and consider the respective strength of the parties now suddenly "precipitated" into conflict. The Federal government in Washington City represented at the time the power and resources of nearly twenty-five millions of people. For the cotton states could alone at that moment be confidently looked to for co-operative aid; and, making allowance for the strength of the Union element existing in all the states of the South from the beginning to the end of this unhappy contest, and for the African element also, which all discerning men foresaw from the commencement, should the war endure long, would be infal libly wielded against the Southern claim to separate independence, no one can suppose that as many as five millions of people could at any time be found, during the four years of terrible suffering through which it has been the fate of the unhappy and deluded South to pass (including men, women, and children), whose hearts were warmly enlisted in the attempt now making to subvert INEQUALITY OF THE STRUGGLE. 337 the government of our fathers. Besides, the strongwilled and resolute men who had been left behind, in Washington City by the rash and improvident Southern senators and representatives, henceforward to wield the thunders of state, without serious let or embarrassment from any quarter, against those who had resolved to organize wild, flaming rebellion in the South, were possessed of a considerable body of regular soldiers, a large navy, and abundant resources of every kind for the prosecution of warlike enterprises; while all the states of the Old World were open to them, and ready to send to them also such supplies as might be needed, and to transmit to them, if these should be desired, millions of willing soldiers, who only needed that a friendly invitation should be extended to them to fly across the deep, in order to aid in defending the venerated national emblem of our country against all who should dare to menace it with dishonor. Surely no historian has ever heretofore recited the incidents of a war in which between the conflicting parties there was greater disparity of strength. But Mr. Davis and his official associates had no correct conception of the true character and dimensions of the war into which they had so hastily plunged, as was afterward frankly confessed in many a lugubrious harangue, and in more than one solemn official document. They did not believe at first that the conflict would endure for a twelve-month, and were even weak enough to calculate most confidently upon strong Northern aid, which it is now well known there never was the least probability of their receiving; albeit ex-President Pierce and several others, whose letters to Mr. Davis have recently seen P |