Yet in both sections was the outward seeming at least of an undivided war sentiment. The Union party of the South, as it had previously existed--a powerful political organization, embracing a majority of the people of the Border States--did not more immediately disappear, as the certainty of war was developed, than did the party of peace at the North. The Northern Democracy did not, for a moment, strive to breast the popular current, but its leaders, the life-long allies of the South, committed, by a thousand declarations to the cause of States' Rights, eagerly vied with the Republican leaders in threats of vengeance against the South. The Dickinsons, Everetts, Cochranes, Logans, and Butlers--hitherto the professed friends and advocates of the South--with that pliant accommodation to circumstances, so befitting the instincts of the demagogue, in their harangues to howling mobs, proclaimed themselves the advocates of a ruthless and indiscriminate warfare upon a people who had been driven, by intolerable wrongs, into patriotic resistance. We have already described the attitude and condition of the Confederate Government at Montgomery previous to the attack upon Fort Sumter. The honorable exertions of President Davis, cordially approved by Congress and the people, to avoid a collision of arms, were disappointed, and events had now verified his life-long conviction, that the exercise of their sovereignty, by the States, would be attended by a war involving their existence. Sustained by an unlimited popular confidence, with a comparatively perfected organization, and with every possible preparation that the difficulties of its situation would permit, the Government met, with commendable composure, the shock of arms which its chief had foreseen to be inevitable. The proclamation of President Lincoln, declaring war upon the Confederate States, was promptly responded to by President Davis, in official announcements, appropriately recognizing the condition of public affairs, and inviting energetic preparations for immediate hostilities. He at once called upon the various States for quotas of volunteers for the public defense. By public proclamation, he invited applications for privateering service, in which armed vessels might assist in the public defense on the high seas; under letters of marque and reprisal granted by Congress.[31]