194 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



There was, however, another exceedingly important question 

 involved in the controversy. That was whether if a state should 

 secede the constitutional right inhered in the general govern- 

 ment to compel by force such state to remain in the Union against 

 its will. Upon this point men of the highest inteUigence and of 

 unquestioned patriotism and loyalty to the government differed 

 in opinion. Many in the North believed with President 

 Buchanan who, while disclaiming the right of a state to secede, 

 declared it as his deliberate opinion that no power has been 

 delegated to Congress or to any other department of the federal 

 government to coerce a state into submission which is attempting 

 to withdraw or actually has withdrawn from the confederacy. 

 Congress, he said, might preserve the Union by conciliation, 

 but the sword was not placed in its hands to preserve it by force. 

 These views, expressed by the official head of the nation in a 

 message to Congress so late as December, i860, undoubtedly 

 served for the time being to divide the North and to unify and 

 strengthen the South in the already largely preponderating 

 opinion entertained in that section against the constitutional 

 right of coercion. 



In the secession of certain of the southern states and their 

 organization into a confederacy ; in the seizure of United States 

 property, as forts, arsenals, custom houses, mints, and post- 

 offices, and their appropriation by the individual states or the 

 confederacy of states, and finally in the premeditated and care- 

 fully planned assault on Fort Sumter, men saw that the time 

 for argument, for conciliation, and for compromise had passed 

 and the time for battle had come. The shots that echoed across 

 the waters of Charleston harbor in the gray dawn of that April 

 morning in 1861 awoke the nation from the repose of peace to 

 the reaUzation of war. In that momentous hour one supreme 

 question challenged every loyal American, "The federal Union, 

 shall it be preserved ?" Upon the issue involved in that question 

 Lincoln made his appeal to the country and in response to that 



