Fort Sumter, after a day and a half of dogged fighting, was surrendered to the enemy on April 13--for as an enemy in arms the South now stood.

The fall of Sumter changed, as in a moment, the whole attitude of the Northern people.

There was now a nearly unanimous cry for the preservation of the Union _by force_.

Yet Seward still clung, privately, to his belief that even now the "sober second thought" of the South would offer a way out toward reunion without war.

In official utterances and acts he was apparently in complete harmony with the popular will to reconquer the South.