The hope of the Southerners was that the government would allow a peaceable withdrawal of the dissatisfied States, and that no bloodshed would be necessary, but as time went by and the most active preparations for keeping them in the Union were made by the general government, they commenced hostilities, and the first gun of the war was fired by the Confederates under General Beauregard on the morning of April 12, and while the officers and men within the fort were eating their breakfast, a perpetual bursting of shells and shot kept them awake to the fact that the peace had been broken, and war had begun.
After breakfast the force was divided up into firing parties and the first reply on the part of the Union was made by Captain Abner Doubleday. But their guns were very light.
A bombardment followed, and on the 14th of April, 1861, General Robert Anderson evacuated the fort.
Blockade running was so common it became necessary to fit out out an expedition to close the most valuable of the openings, Hatteras Inlet. The first expedition projected for this purpuse was fitted out near Fortress Monroe and was under the command of Flag Officer Silas H. Stringham. The engagement lasted three hours with a complete victory for Stringham, and several blockade runners entered the inlet and were captured.
The news fell like a pall upon the North. It was impossible so many and old man urged, that Americans, our own people could be so disloyal. Why had they done it? What did it mean? And when, in consequence of this act, President Lincoln ordered them to disperse within twenty days, and called for 75,000 men from the various States, to enlist to "suppress this combination against the laws," the response came swiftly.
In every town and village the patriotic fires were kindled, and boys and old men pressed on, side by side, willing to give their lives, if need be, to uphold their country's flag.
Many a smooth-cheeked lad, loved dearly and tenderly reared, went forth from his home, never again to enter its portal. Alas, for those sad days!
Recruiting went swiftly on. Speech-making and passionate appeals to the people were heard in every quarter of the North.
Women could not fight, but they could organize sewing societies, and work untiringly for those who had gone to the front. Many an article found its way to the army that was useful, and when blood had been spilled, these same patient and tearful women sent lint, and bandages, and medicines, for the sick and wounded.
As the call for soldiers awoke the boys and men of the North, so did a like summons from their leaders arouse the spirit of the South. They had orators in their midst, whose tones swayed them, and they, too, enlisted to form an army which should repel the "encroachments" of those whom they deemed their enemies.
Boys went forth from luxurious homes, and stood shoulder to shoulder with the humblest, clad in the gray, all equally ready to sacrifice life and home to their idea of duty.
One lad, in his Western home, a dreamer thus far, the light of his widowed mother's life, heard the war cry, and the blood tingled in his veins as he listened to stirring arguments day by day, and saw one after another of his companions leave their homes to join the forces that were being hurried forward to headquarters.
He felt that he must go with them. Why not? His eye was as keen, his brain as clear, his arm as strong to do whatever his country required of him, as were theirs.
This longing haunted him by day and night, until it became unbearable. He went to his mother, and with earnest words begged her to send him. Alas, that mother was not equal to the task. She was loving, gentle and shrinking, and when he urged her to let him go, her answer was—"Ralph, you know not what you ask. Do you forget that I am a Southern woman, whose childhoods days were spent in that beautiful country? All my people are there. Would you have me send my boy away to fight those I love, and whose feelings I must share? You are asking too great a sacrifice at my hands."
"Mother, it is true that you were born and educated there. But did you not love my father so dearly that you left your home and all your friends to come to the North with him, where I was born?"
A tender smile flitted across her still beautiful face. "Yes, I did love him," she said softly to herself, "and I honor his memory. What shall I do?—I cannot forget my dear childhood's home. It is too hard a question for me to decide."
"Let me decide for you, mother. You surely love your Northern home and friends. The people of the South have fired upon our forts in Charleston harbor, and driven the garrison away. I, too, am a Southerner in many ways. Are you not my mother, and do you not know I honor every thought or wish of yours?"
"There must be some other way to bring them back, rather than by fighting. War is a cruel and unnatural alternative. Why, they will be firing upon their own people—like brothers in one family falling out, and seeking to do each other deadly harm."
Ralph was silent. His heart burned with patriotic fire, and it seemed to him that it was his duty to help swell the numbers of those who were ready to respond to the President's call. But he also knew that his mother loved her early home, and that it seemed to her unnatural for him to be so ready to take up arms against "her people," and he respected her too deeply to wound her willingly. That mother had been gently born, and when she met the young Northern lawyer, she had loved him from the first, and cheerfully shared his humble but peaceful home. She was now left alone in the world, with her three girls and this boy, the youngest. The fortunes of war were too varying. She might never see him again, and how could she live without him?
To Ralph was presented a problem that he was called unexpectedly to solve. He pondered over it in the silence of night, and in the busy hours of day. Was it right to fly in the face of his beloved mother's prejudices by joining the Federal forces? On the one hand he felt that he, too, was Southern in feeling and in birth. His father was a Northern man, and he would uphold the old flag; but which side it was his duty to join, he could not determine. He was resolved to go into one of the two armies. In the crisis that had come, it was clearly every one's duty to come to the front.
The boy talked with every one whom he could interest. He was not able to study out the problem alone. One of his schoolmates had the proud distinction of having an uncle who was a commissioned officer, and he took the bold step of meeting him one day when he was walking past his home.
"Sir," he said timidly, "may I speak to you?"
"Certainly," the officer replied. And then and there he poured forth his doubts, his desire to do what was right, his mother's objections—all, he told the waiting gentleman whose opinion he so desired.
The officer laid his hand kindly on the boy's shoulder.
"Your wish does you credit. The fortunes of war are too varying for me to decide for you. Try and work out the proper answer yourself, and may you be helped to make a wise decision."
Alas, the question was too hard for a boy like him to answer. He was humbly trying to see where his duty lay, and then he was ready to enlist on whichever side called him. On one hand was his mother and her early teachings, on the other his dead father, with all his views. "What side would he choose were he here?" was the ever-recurring thought in his anxious brain.
But after weeks of this long, weary struggle, he decided to join the Union army. His mother saw that he believed he was shirking a duty, and that he longed for action.
She thought she would make one more effort to change his purpose. She said to him suddenly one day, when she saw his troubled face: "Ralph, you are only seventeen. You have never been away from your home, and know nothing about hardships and privations. Do you think you could face a cannon, and know that its deadly mouth might lay you low on the field, mangled and torn?"
"Oh, mother, I never think of such things. If I enlist, I must take my chances with the rest. I want to go with the other boys. Eddie Downing and George Martin have and are going into camp to-morrow, at Readville."
"But will the government accept you? Eddie and George are three or four years older than you. There are plenty of men, without taking a boy who is his mother's chief comfort."
"I