When Fort Sumter was surrendered, the Confederates had already acquired possession of Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, Fort Pulaski at Savannah, Fort Morgan at the entrance of Mobile Bay, Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans, the navy-yard and Forts McRae and Barrancas at Pensacola, the arsenals at Mount Vernon, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark., and the New Orleans Mint. The largest force of United States regulars was that in Texas, under command of Gen. David E. Twiggs, who surrendered it in February, and turned over to the insurgents one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of military property. On the day when Sumter fell, President Lincoln penned a proclamation, issued the next day (Monday, April 15), which declared "that the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are, opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law," and called for militia from the several States of the Union to the number of seventy-five thousand. It also called a special session of Congress, to convene on July 4. He appealed "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." With regard to the reception of this celebrated proclamation in the South, Alexander H. Stephens writes as follows, in his History of the war: "The effect of this upon the public mind of the Southern States cannot be described or even estimated. Up to this time, a majority, I think, of even those who favored the policy of secession had done so under the belief and conviction that it was the surest way of securing a redress of grievances, and of bringing the Federal Government back to Constitutional principles. This proclamation dispelled all such hopes. It showed that the party in power intended nothing short of complete centralization. The principles actuating the Washington authorities were those aiming at consolidated power; while the principles controlling the action of the Montgomery authorities were those which enlisted devotion and attachment to the Federative system as established by the Fathers in 1778 and 1787. In short, the cause of the Confederates was States Sovereignty, or the sovereign right of local self-government on the part of the States severally. The cause of their assailants involved the overthrow of this entire fabric, and the erection of a centralized empire in its stead."