The general feeling was strongly in favor of their Southern brethren; but they were anxious for peace, and for a compromise being arrived at.

Whether the North would agree to admit the constitutional right of secession, or whether it would use force to compel the seceding States to remain in the Union, was still uncertain; but the idea of a civil war was so terrible a one that the general belief was that some arrangement to allow the States to go their own way would probably be arrived at.
For the time the idea of Vincent going to West Point was abandoned.
Among his acquaintances were several young men who were already at West Point, and very few of these returned to the academy.

The feeling there was very strongly on the side of secession.

A great majority of the students came from the Southern States, as, while the sons of the Northern men went principally into trade and commerce, the Southern planters sent their sons into the army, and a great proportion of the officers of the army and navy were Southerners.
As the professors at West Point were all military men, the feeling among them, as well as among the students, was in favor of State rights; they considering that, according to the Constitution, their allegiance was due first to the States of which they were natives, and in the second place to the Union.

Thus, then, many of the professors who were natives of the seven States which had seceded resigned their appointments, and returned home to occupy themselves in drilling the militia and the levies, who were at once called to arms.
Still all hoped that peace would be preserved, until on the 11th of April General Beauregard, who commanded the troops of South Carolina, summoned Major Anderson, who was in command of the Federal troops in Fort Sumter, to surrender, and on his refusal opened fire upon the fort on the following day.
On the 13th the barracks of the fort being set on fire, Major Anderson, seeing the hopelessness of a prolonged resistance, surrendered.