Seward: The President dwelt on his resolution to hold Fort Sumter in his inaugural address.

Mr. Lincoln immediately reenlisted as a private and served for several weeks, being finally mustered out on June 16, 1832, by Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who afterwards commanded Fort Sumter at the beginning of the civil war.

A malicious citizen assured me that it was in training to take Fort Sumter by charging upon it at low water.

"As yet, behind high ramparts stem and proud Where bolted thunders sleep, Dark Sumter like a battlemented cloud Towers o'er the solemn deep.

"Well," said he, "the First, or part of it, went under the guns of Sumter on the morning of January ninth, just an hour after the Cadets had fired on the Star of the West; we thought Sumter would sink us, but she didn't say a word.

81-2. Once more he repeated that the security of Fort Moultrie would be more greatly increased by throwing garrisons into Castle Pinckney and Fort Sumter than by anything that could be done in strengthening its own defenses.

If, when a schoolboy, poring over the pages of my country's history, I have stood, in imagination, with Prescott at Bunker Hill, and stormed with Ethan Allen at the gates of Ticonderoga, I have also mourned with Washington at Valley Forge, and followed Marion and Sumter through the wilds of Carolina.

This last would be a clear indication of policy, and would better enable the country to accept the evacuation of Fort Sumter as a military necessity.

To speak plainly to the world in standing by our resolution to hold Fort Sumter with all our means, and in a plain declaration that the Union must be preserved, will leave us with a clean cause, simply and loyally supported.

[Footnote 1: "Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the gorge walls seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames, and its door closed from the effect of heat, four barrels and three cartridges of powder being available, and no provisions remaining but pork, I accepted terms of evacuation offered by General Beauregard . .

All the great leaders of the first Secession school had passed away from the earth, when Rhett "still lived" to see the flag he hated pulled down before the fire that was poured upon Fort Sumter from Carolina's batteries worked by the hands of Carolinians.