I
tried my best to keep out of the current, and only talked freely
with a few men; among them Colonel John O'Fallon, a wealthy
gentleman who resided above St. Louis. He daily came down to my
office in Bremen, and we walked up and down the pavement by the
hour, deploring the sad condition of our country, and the seeming
drift toward dissolution and anarchy. I used also to go down to
the arsenal occasionally to see Lyon, Totten, and other of my army
acquaintance, and was glad to see them making preparations to
defend their post, if not to assume the offensive.
The bombardment of Fort Sumter, which was announced by telegraph,
began April 12th, and ended on the 14th. We then knew that the war
was actually begun, and though the South was openly, manifestly the
aggressor, yet her friends and apologists insisted that she was
simply acting on a justifiable defensive, and that in the forcible
seizure of, the public forts within her limits the people were
acting with reasonable prudence and foresight. Yet neither party
seemed willing to invade, or cross the border. Davis, who ordered
the bombardment of Sumter, knew the temper of his people well, and
foresaw that it would precipitate the action of the border States;
for almost immediately Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and
Tennessee, followed the lead of the cotton States, and conventions
were deliberating in Kentucky and Missouri.
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