Personal Recollections of the Civil War

During the winter of 1860 and 1861 there was great uneasiness felt in the North. The South, through the democratic party, had been the ruling section of the country most of the time since the establishment of the Republic, but at the time of the election in the autumn of 1860 a northern political party had won. That party was not only a northern party, but it was an abolition party. The election of an abolition president, Mr. Lincoln, by the North, was at once regarded as a menace to the slave holding interests of the South, which section at once began to make preparations to withdraw from the Union. As the spring months passed and Mr. Lincoln, the new president, took his seat, secession was more and more talked about. Soon the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked in Baltimore.