While Charleston resumed and intensified her exulting revels,' and the telegraph invited all 'Dixie' to share the rapture of her triumph, the weary garrison extinguished the fire still, raging, and lay down to rest for the night. The steamboat Isabel came down next morning to take them off; but delay occurred in their removal by tug to her deck, until it was too late to go out by that day's tide. When the baggage had all been removed, a part of the garrison was told off as gunners to salute their flag with fifty guns; the Stars and Stripes being lowered with cheers at the firing of the last gun. Unhappily, there was at that fire a premature explosion, whereby one of the gunners was killed, and three more or less seriously wounded. The men were then formed and marched out, preceded by their band, playing inspiring airs, and taken on board the Isabel, whereby

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| they were transferred to the Federal steamship Baltic, awaiting them off the bar, which brought them directly to New York, whence Maj. Anderson dispatched to his Government this brief and manly report:

"STEAMSHIP BALTIC, OFF SANDY HOOK, "The Honorable S. CAMERON, April 18, 1861.

}

Secretary of War, Washington, D. C. : thirty-four hours, until the quarters were "SIR: Having defended Fort Sumter for entirely burned, the main gates destroyed, the gorge-wall seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames, and its door closed from the effects of the heat, four barrels and three cartridges of powder only being available, and no provisions but pork remaining, I accepted terms of evacuation offered by Gen. Beauregard (being the same offered by him on the 11th instant, prior to the commencement of hostilities), and marched out of the fort on Sunday afternoon, the 14th instant, with colors flying and drums beating, bringing away company and private property, and saluting my flag with fifty guns.

WHETHER the bombardment and reduction of Fort Sumter shall or shall not be justified by posterity, it is clear that the Confederacy had no alternative but its own dissolution. Five months had elapsed since the Secession movement was formally inaugurated-five months of turmoil, uncertainty, and business stagnation, throughout the seceded States. That

811 Bishop Lynch (Roman Catholic), of Charleston, S. C., celebrated on Sunday the bloodless victory of Fort Sumter with a Te Deum and congratulatory address. In all the churches, allusions were made to the subject. The Episcopal Bishop, wholly blind and feeble, said it was his strong persuasion, confirmed by travel

section was deeply in debt to the merchants and manufacturers of the Northern cities, as well as to the slave-breeders and slave-traders of the Border States; and, while many creditors were naturally urgent for their pay, few desired or consented to extend their credits in that quarter. Secession had been almost everywhere followed, if not preceded, by

through every section of South Carolina, that the movement in which the people were engaged was begun by them in the deepest conviction of duty to God; and God had signally blessed their dependence on Him. If there is a war, it will be purely a war of self-defense."-New York Tribune, April 16.

a suspension of specie payments by the Banks; and, though the lawyers in most places patriotically refused to receive Northern claims for collection, a load of debt weighed heavily on the planting' and trading classes of the entire South, of whom thousands had rushed into political convulsion for relief from the intolerable pressure. Industry, save on the plantations, was nearly at a stand; never before were there so many whites vainly seeking employment. The North, of course, sympathized with these embarrassments through the falling off in its trade, especially with the South, and through the paucity of remittances; but our currency was still sound, while Southern debts had always been slow, and paid substantially at the convenience of the debtors, when paid at all. Still, the feeling that the existing suspense and apprehension were intolerable, and that almost any change would be an improvement, was by no means confined to the South.

'The following private letter from a South Carolina planter to an old friend settled in Texas, gives a fair idea of the situation :

"ABBEVILLE C. H., S. C., Jan. 24,1861. "DEAR SIR:-I desire you to procure for me, and send by mail, a Texas Almanac. Six months since, I felt perfectly willing to remain in South Carolina; but I can remain here no longer. At the election of Lincoln, we all felt that we must resist. In this move, I placed myself among the foremost, and am yet determined to resist him to the bitter end. I had my misgivings, at first, of the idea of separate Secession; but thought it would be but for a short time, and at small cost. In this manner, together with thousands of other Carolinians, we have been mistaken. Everything is in the wildest commotion. My bottom land on Long Cone, for which I could have gotten thirty dollars per acre, I now cannot sell at any price. All our young men, nearly, are in and around Charleston. Thither we have sent many hundreds of our negroes (I have sent twenty) to work. Crops were very short last year; and it does now seem that nothing will be planted this coming season. All are excited to the highest pitch, and not a thought of the future is taken. Messengers are

Secession, as we have seen, had been initiated by the aid of the most positive assurances that, once fairly in progress, every Slave State would speedily and surely unite in it; yet, up to this time, but seven of the fif teen Slave States, having a decided minority of the population, and a still more decided minority of the white inhabitants, of that section,' had justified the sanguine promise. On the contrary, the so-called 'Border States,' with Tennessee and Arkansas, had voted not to secede, and most of them by overwhelming majorities; save that Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, had scarcely deigned to take the matter into consideration. And, despite Vice-President Stephens's glowing rhetoric, it was plain that the seceded States did not and could not suffice to form a nation. Already, the talk in their aristocratic circles of Protectorates and imported Princes' betrayed their own consciousness of this. Either to attack the Union, and thus provoke

running here and there, with and without the Governor's orders. We have no money. A forced tax is levied upon every man. I have furnished the last surplus dollar I have. I had about $27,000 in the bank. At first, I gave a check for $10,000; then $5,000; then the remainder. It is now estimated that we are spending $25,000 per day, and no prospect of getting over these times. It was our full understanding, when we went out of the Union, that we would have a new Government of all the Southern States. Our object was to bring about a collision with the authorities at Washington, which all thought would make all join us. Although we have sought such collision in every way, we have not yet got a fight, and the prospect is very distant. I want the Almanac to see what part of Texas may suit me. I want to raise cotton principally, but must raise corn enough to do me. I cannot live here, and must get away. Many are leaving now; at least 10,000 negroes have left already; and, before long, one-third of the wealth of South Carolina will be in the West. I desire you to look around and help me to get a home. As ever yours, "ROBERT LYON."

'Wm. H. Russell, of The London Times, in his

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And, though signally beaten in the recent elections of the non-seceded Slave States, they had yet a very strong party in most of those States -stronger in wealth, in social standing, and in political activity and influence, than in numbers. A majority of these had been able to bring the Conventions or the Legislatures of their respective States to say, with tolerable unanimity, "If the Black Republicans attempt to coërce the seceded States, we will join them in armed resistance." It was indispensable, therefore, to their mutual pur

'Diary, North and South," writing at Charleston, April 18, 1861, says:

"These tall, thin, fine-faced Carolinians are great materialists. Slavery, perhaps, has aggravated the tendency to look at all the world through parapets of cotton-bales and rice-bags; and, though more stately and less vulgar, the worshipers here are not less prostrate before the almighty dollar' than the Northerners. Again, cropping out of the dead level of hate to the Yankee, grows its climax in the profession, from nearly every one of the guests, that he would prefer a return to British rule to any reunion with New England. ***They affect the agricultural faith and the belief of a landed gentry. It is not only over the wine-glass-why call it cup?-that they ask for a Prince to reign over them. I have heard the wish repeatedly expressed within the last two days that we could spare them one of our young Princes, but never in jest or in any frivolous manner."

Mr. Russell's letters from Charleston to The Times are to the same effect, but more explicit and circumstantial.

The Richmond Whig of November 9, 1860, had the following:

"Because the Union was created by the voluntary consent of the original States, it does not follow that such consent can be withdrawn at will by any single party to the compact, and its obligations and duties, its burdens and demands, be avoided. A government resting on such a basis would be as unstable as the ever-shifting

So late as April 4th-a month after the return of her 'Commissioners' from the abortive Peace Conference

-Virginia, through her Convention, by the decisive vote of 89 to 45, refused to pass an Ordinance of Secession. Still, her conspirators worked on, like those of the other 'Border States,' and claimed, not without plausible grounds, that they were making headway. Richmond was the focus of their intrigues, as it was of her Slave-trade; but it was boasted that, whereas two of her three delegates to the Convention were chosen as Unionists, she would now give a decided majority for Secession. The Richmond Whig,' the time-honored. organ of her Whig 'Conservatives,'

sands. The sport of every popular excitement, the victim of every conflicting interest, of plotting ambition or momentary impulse, it would afford no guarantee of perpetuity, while the hours bring round the circuit of a single year. To suppose that a single State could withdraw at will, is to brand the statesmen of the Revolution, convinced of the weakness and certain destruction of the old Confederation of States, of laboring to perpetuate the evil they attempted to remedy. The work, which has been the marvel of the world, would be no government at all; the oaths taken to support and maintain it would be bitter mockery of serious obligations; and nothing would exist to invite the confidence of citizens or strangers in its protection.

"Less strong would it be than a business partnership of limited time. From this, neither party who has entered into it can escape, except by due course of law. Withdrawal of one member carries no rights of possession of property or control of the affairs of the partnership, unless the injunctions of legal tribunals are invoked to restrain all action until the matter in dispute is settled. A State seceding knows no law to maintain its interest nor vindicate its rights. The right to secede, on the other hand, places the Government more at the mercy of popular whim than the business interest of the least mercantile establishment in the country is placed, by the law of the land."

Such were the just and forcibly stated convictions of a leading journal, which soon after be came, and has since remained, a noisy oracle of Secession.