Admitting as he had, too, that he had met his master, he took the
defeat as a good sportsman and threw all his vast party influence
into the scale for Lincoln's fortunes. Thus, as April wore on,
the Republican party settled down to the idea that it was to
follow the Government at Washington upon any course that might
develop.
The Democrats in the North were anti-Southern in larger
proportion, probably, than at any other time during the struggle
of the sections. We have seen that numbers of them had frankly
declared for the Union. Politics had proved weaker than
propinquity. There was a moment when it seemed--delusively, as
events proved--that the North was united as one man to oppose the
South.
There is surely not another day in our history that has witnessed
so much nervous tension as Saturday, April 13, 1861, for on that
morning the newspapers electrified the North with the news that
Sumter had been fired on from Confederate batteries on the shore
of Charleston Harbor. In the South the issue was awaited
confidently, but many minds at least were in that state of awed
suspense natural to a moment which the thoughtful see is the
stroke of fate. In the North, the day passed for the most part
in a quiet so breathless that even the most careless could have
foretold the storm which broke on the following day.
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