Abraham Lincoln, Part 4 (Border States)

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.

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In April, eighteen-sixty-one, the long dispute between America's
north and south burst into civil war. Seven southern states had
withdrawn or seceded from the Union. Southern soldiers of the New
Confederate States of America shelled the United States fort in the
Harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. After two days, they captured
Fort Sumter.

President Abraham Lincoln asked the states of the Union for
seventy-five thousand soldiers to help end the southern rebellion.
Northern states quickly formed military groups and sent them to
Washington. But border states -- those between the north and south
-- refused to send any. Some prepared to leave the Union and join
the Confederacy.

I'm Shirley Griffith. Today, Steve Ember and I tell about the
first days of America's Civil War.

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VOICE TWO:

The first state to secede after the start of the Civil War was
Virginia. It was an important state because of its location. It was
just across the Potomac River from Washington.

Virginia's decision to secede cost
the Union a military commander of great ability. He was Robert E.
Lee. Lee was a Virginian and had served in the United States army
for more than thirty years. Lincoln asked him to be head of the army
when General Winfield Scott retired.

Lee said he could not accept the job. He said he opposed
secession and loved the Union. But, he said, he could not make war
on his home state. Lee resigned from the army. He did not really
want to fight at all. But soon after his resignation, he agreed to
command the forces of Virginia.

VOICE ONE:

Virginia's forces moved quickly after the state seceded. A group
of one thousand soldiers went to Harpers Ferry, Virginia where the
Union army had a gun factory and arsenal. It was the same town where
Abolitionist John Brown had tried to start a slave rebellion a few
years before.

Hack boxes overlooking Harpers Ferry, WV Courtesy: Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

The United States force at Harpers
Ferry was small. The soldiers could not defend the town against the
Virginians, so they left. Before marching away, the soldiers set
fire to the gun factory and arsenal.

The fire did not destroy all the equipment at the gun factory.
When the Virginians captured the town, they sent the equipment
south, where it was used to make guns for Confederate soldiers.

VOICE TWO:

Virginia's forces also moved against the United States' biggest
navy base, which was at Norfolk, Virginia. Once again, the Union
force withdrew. Before leaving, it burned every building and sank
every ship.

President Lincoln was becoming increasingly worried about
Virginia's military moves. He was afraid confederate forces in
Virginia might try to capture Washington in the first days of the
war. After all, the Confederate Secretary of War had declared that
the Confederate flag would fly over the Capitol building before the
first of May.

Washington was not strongly defended. It did not have enough
soldiers to stop any real attempt by Confederate forces to seize the
city. It was extremely important to get more soldiers to Washington
as quickly as possible.

VOICE ONE:

Thousands of men were on their way to Washington. But they could
not get there quickly.

Troop trains had to pass through the state of Maryland to get to
Washington from the north. Many people in the state supported the
Confederacy. The governor, however, did not. He refused to call a
meeting of the state legislature. He was afraid it might vote to
secede. He wanted to keep Maryland neutral.

The first troop train from the north passed through Baltimore,
Maryland, without incident. The second train was not so lucky.

A mob blocked the rail line and threw stones at the train. Shots
were fired. Four soldiers and twelve civilians were killed.

State and city officials met to discuss the trouble. They agreed
that there would be even more violence in the future. So they
ordered railroad bridges outside Baltimore destroyed. No more trains
from the north could reach Washington that way.

VOICE TWO:

President Lincoln told the
officials of the great need to get more soldiers to the capital. He
agreed that they did not have to pass through Baltimore. But he
wanted them to be able to land safely at Annapolis, a city on the
Chesapeake Bay.

Landing at Annapolis would be easy. Getting to the capital would
not. Supporters of the Confederacy had damaged trains, rail lines
and bridges between the two cities. The first soldiers to land at
Annapolis had to repair everything as they moved ahead.

Still, with all these difficulties, ten-thousand troops made it
to Washington in the first few weeks of the Civil War. The city and
government were safe.

VOICE ONE:

President Lincoln worried about the presence of Confederate
supporters in Maryland. He knew they would continue to be a threat
to the movement of Union troops and supplies.

Lincoln wanted to restrict the activities of the Confederate
supporters. So he took an extremely unusual step for an American
president. He put much of Maryland under military rule. He gave
military officers the power to arrest civilians believed to be
hostile to the Union. And he gave them the power to hold these
suspects without trial.

This order suspended two of the basic rights under the
Constitution. One was the right to go free until officially charged.
And the other was the right to a speedy trial.

The Chief Justice of the United States wrote a letter to
President Lincoln. He said the Constitution did not give the
president the power to suspend the rights of citizens. Lincoln
disagreed. He felt the situation facing the Union permitted him to
take such strong measures. If he had not acted, he believed,
Maryland would have seceded.

VOICE TWO:

Maryland did not withdraw. But North Carolina, Tennessee, and
Arkansas did. There were now eleven states in the Confederacy. There
could be two more. No one knew how long Kentucky and Missouri would
remain in the Union. Both supported the southern rebels.

President Lincoln treated Kentucky carefully. He did not want the
state to secede. Nor did he want it to remain neutral. Kentucky
reached from the mountains of Virginia to the Mississippi River. As
a neutral state, Kentucky could block northern troops from much of
the south. Lincoln wanted it firmly on the side of the Union.

The president did not use force in Kentucky, as he had done in
Maryland. Instead, he sent people to Kentucky to organize support
for the Union. Newspapers were urged to publish pro-union
statements. Home guard forces were formed. They received their
weapons and supplies from Lincoln's administration.

Lincoln hoped that, in time, these efforts would win Kentucky's
support for his war effort.

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VOICE ONE:

In Missouri, the governor tried hard to take the state out of the
Union. He called a convention to decide the question. A majority of
the delegates refused to vote for secession.

The governor organized state soldiers. The Lincoln administration
organized home guard forces. The two sides clashed several times.
Some civilians were killed.

The United States army finally seized government buildings in the
state capital. They forced state officials, including the governor,
to flee. Missouri would remain in the Union.

VOICE TWO:

The capital of the Confederate states of America was located far
south in Montgomery, Alabama. Within the first few weeks of the
Civil War, the Confederate Congress voted to move the capital
farther north to Richmond, Virginia. They believed Virginia would be
an important battlefield in the war. They were right.

Two days before Confederate President Jefferson Davis left for
Richmond, Union troops invaded Virginia. They left Washington,
crossed the Potomac River, and seized the towns of Arlington and
Alexandria.

No shots were fired. Confederate forces withdrew as Union troops
moved forward. Within a month, thousands more Union soldiers were in
Virginia. They were to prepare for a major battle at a place called
Manassas Junction...or Bull Run.

That will be our story next week.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the Special English program, THE
MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Shirley Griffith and Steve
Ember. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley.