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283

apt to assume that a political opponent must be a person unworthy of respect. Even in his own service he was impatient of rebuke. To those under his command he was always genial and brotherly; but to those above him he was sometimes wanting in that patient submission which is an essential quality of those who would learn how to command with most success. Cochrane's true place was on his quarter-deck; his opportunity came in the extreme moment of danger. Then his spirit asserted itself. His gift was that which wrenches success out of the very jaws of failure; he saw his way most clearly when most others began to despair. During part of his later life he had been occupying himself with some inventions of his own some submarine methods for blowing up ships, some engines which were, by their terrible destructiveness, to abridge the struggles and agonies of war. At the time of the Crimean War he offered to the Government to destroy Sebastopol in a few hours by some of his plans. The proposal was examined by a committee, and was not accepted. It was his death, on October 30, 1860, which recalled to the mind of the living generation the hero whose exploits had divided the admiration of their fathers with those of Nelson, of Collingwood, and of Sidney Smith. A new style of naval warfare has come up since those days, and perhaps Cochrane may be regarded as the last of the old sea-kings.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

The

CIVIL war broke out in the United States. long threatened had come to pass. Abraham Lincoln's election as President, brought about by the party divisions of the Southerners among themselves, seemed to the South the beginning of a new order of things, in which they and their theories of government would no longer predominate. They felt that the peculiar institution, on which they believed their prosperity and their pride to depend, was threatened with extinction, and they preferred secession to such a result. In truth the two sets of institutions were incompatible. A system founded on slavery could not be worked much longer in combination with the political and social institutions of the Northern States. The struggle was one for life or death between slavery and the principles of modern society. When things had come to this pass it is hardly worth stopping to consider what particular event it was which brought about the actual collision. If the election of Mr. Lincoln had not supplied the occasion something else would have furnished it. Those who are acquainted with the history of the great emancipation struggle in America know very well that if

1861.

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERATION.

285 the South had not seceded from the Union, some of the Northern States would sooner or later have done so. Every day in the Northern States saw an increase in the number of those who would rather have seceded than give further countenance to the system of slavery. It was a peculiarity of that system that it could not stand still; it could not rest content with tolerance and permission to hold what it already possessed. It must have new ground, new fields to occupy. It must get more or die. Most of the Abolitionists would rather themselves secede than yield any more to slavery.

We are chiefly concerned in this history with the American Civil War in so far as it affected England. It becomes part of our history, by virtue of the Alabama question and the Treaty of Washington. It is important to introduce a short narrative of the events which led to the long dispute between England and the United States, a dispute which brought us more than once to the very edge of war, and which was only settled by the almost unparalleled concession of the Washington Treaty. The Southern States, led by South Carolina, seceded. Their delegates assembled at Montgomery, in Alabama, on February 4, 1861, to agree upon a constitution. A Southern confederation was formed, with Mr. Jefferson Davis as its President. Mr. Davis announced the determination of the South to maintain its independence by the final arbitrament of the sword, 'if passion or lust of dominion should cloud the judgment or influence the ambition of the North.' This announce

ment was made on February 18, 1861, and on March 4 following the new President of the United States entered formally into office. Mr. Lincoln announced that he had no intention to interfere with the institution of slavery in any State where it existed ; that the law gave him no power to do so, even if he had the inclination; but that, on the other hand, no State could, upon its own mere motion, lawfully get out of the Union; that acts of violence against the authority of the United States must be regarded as insurrectionary or revolutionary. There was still an impression in this country, and to some extent in America, that an invitation was thus held out by Mr. Lincoln to the Southern States to enter into peaceful negotiations, with a view to a dissolution of partnership. But if there was any such intention in the mind of Mr. Lincoln, or any possibility of carrying it into effect, all such contingencies were put out of the question by the impetuous action of South Carolina. This State had been the first to secede, and it was the first to commit an act of war. The traveller in South Carolina, as he stands on one of the quays of Charleston and looks towards the Atlantic, sees the sky line across the harbour broken by a heavy-looking solid square fort, which soon became famous in the war. This was Fort Sumter, a place built on an artificial island, with walls some sixty feet high and eight to twelve feet thick. It was in the occupation of the Federal Government, as of course were the defences of all the harbours of the Union. It is, perhaps, not necessary to say that

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THE BLOCKADE.

287

while each State made independently its local laws, the Federal Government and Congress had the charge of all business of national interest, customs duties, treaties, the army and navy, and the coast defences. The Federal Government had therefore a garrison in Fort Sumter, and when there seemed a possibility of civil war, they were anxious to reinforce it. A vessel which they sent for the purpose was fired at, from a great island in the harbour, by the excited secessionists of South Carolina, and on April 12 the Confederates, who had erected batteries on the mainland for the purpose, began to bombard the fort. The little garrison had no means of resistance, and after a harmless bombardment of two days it surrendered, and Fort Sumter was in the hands of the Secessionists of South Carolina. The effect of this piece of news on the mind of the North has been well and tersely described by a writer of the time. It was as if while two persons were still engaged in a peaceful discussion as to some claim of right, one suddenly brought the debate to a close by giving the other a box on the ear. There was an end to all negotiation; thenceforward only strokes could arbitrate.

Four days after, President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand men to volunteer in re-establishing the Federal authority over the rebel States. President Davis immediately announced his intention to issue letters of marque. President Lincoln declared the Southern ports under blockade. On May 8 Lord John Russell announced in the House of Com