[Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) by James Gillespie Blaine]@TWC D-Link book
Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2)

CHAPTER XIV
9/45

Those who had urged Mr.Davis to strike a blow and to sprinkle blood in the faces of the people as a means of consolidating Southern opinion, were undoubtedly successful.
Throughout the States of the Confederacy the inhabitants were crazed with success.

They had taken from the National Government its strongest fortress on the South-Atlantic coast.

They felt suddenly awakened to a sense of power, and became wild with confidence in their ability to defy the authority of the United States.
EFFECT OF FORT SUMTER'S FALL.
The Confederate Government, however, had not anticipated the effect of an actual conflict on the people of the North.

Until the hour of the assault on Sumter they had every reason for believing that Mr.Lincoln's administration was weak; that it had not a sustaining force of public opinion behind it in the free States; that, in short, Northern people were divided very much on the line of previous party organizations, and that his opponents had been steadily gaining, his supporters as steadily losing, since the day of the Presidential election in November.

The Confederates naturally counted much on this condition of Northern sentiment, and took to themselves the comforting assurance that vigorous war could never be made by a divided people.


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