The shot that was fired on Sumter was the signal for a nation to rise in arms. That Sunday on which Sumter was evacuated was a memorable day to all who witnessed the intense excitement, the patriotic fury of a patient people roused to white-hot indignation. As on a gala day, the American flag suddenly appeared on every public building and from innumerable private residences. Crowds surged through the streets, seeking news and conference. The national flag was thrown to the breeze from nearly every court-house, school-house, college, hotel, engine-house, railway station and public building, from the spires of many churches, and from the windows of innumerable private residences. The fife and drum were heard in the streets, and recruiting offices were opened in vacant stores or in tents hastily pitched in the public squares. All sorts and conditions of men left their business and stepped into the ranks, and in a few days the Government was offered several times as many troops as had been called for. Boys of fifteen sat down and wept because they were not permitted to go, but here and there one dried his tears when he was told that he might be a drummer or an officer's servant. Attentions between young people were suddenly ripened into engagements, and engagements of long date were hastily finished in marriages; for the boys were going, and the girls were proud to have them go, and wanted to send them off in good spirits. Everybody seemed anxious to put forth some expression of loyalty to the national government and the starry flag. In the Ohio senate, on Friday, the 12th, a senator announced that "the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter." "Glory to God!" exclaimed a woman in the gallery, breaking the solemn silence which briefly followed the announcement. This was Abby Kelly Foster, an active abolitionist, who discerned that at last the final appeal had been taken on the slavery question--the appeal to the sword--from the triumphant issue of which would come the freedom for which she and her associates had contended, and which they believed could come in no other way. [Illustration: "WAR GOVERNORS" OF THE NORTHERN STATES.] On Monday, April 15, President Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand militia from the several States "to suppress this combination against the laws, and to cause the laws to be duly executed." The response to this call was immediate, and within the week some of the troops thus summoned were in Washington. While forts and arsenals were being seized by the Confederates all over the South, while batteries to reduce Fort Sumter were being constructed and armed, what had been doing at Washington city, the capital of the nation? {19} CHAPTER II. PREPARATION FOR CONFLICT.