Conflict_, i. 349, says that the "open
Secessionists were but a handful." This, however, is clearly an
exaggerated statement.
CHAPTER IX
A REAL PRESIDENT, AND NOT A REAL BATTLE
The capture of Fort Sumter and the call for troops established one fact.
There was to be a war. The period of speculation was over and the period
of action had begun. The transition meant much. The talking men of the
country had not appeared to advantage during the few months in which
they had been busy chiefly in giving weak advice and in concocting
prophecies. They now retired before the men of affairs, who were to do
better. To the Anglo-Saxon temperament it was a relief to have done with
waiting and to begin to do something. Activity cleared the minds of men,
and gave to each his appropriate duty.
The gravity of the crisis being undeniable, the people of the North
queried, with more anxiety than ever before, as to what kind of a chief
they had taken to carry them through it. But the question which all
asked none could answer. Mr. Lincoln had achieved a good reputation as a
politician and a stump speaker. Whatever a few might _think_, this was
all that any one _knew_. The narrow limitations of his actual experience
certainly did not encourage a belief in his probable fitness to
encounter duties more varied, pressing, numerous, novel, and difficult
than had ever come so suddenly to confound any ruler within recorded
time.
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