North _v._ South--A new President hates slavery--Fort Sumter is bombarded--Ladies on the house-top--Niggers don’t mind shells--A blockade-runner comes to Oxford--The _Banshee_ strips for the race--Wilmington--High pay--Lights out--Cast the lead--A stern chase--The run home--Lying _perdu_--The _Night-hawk_ saved by Irish humour--Southern need at the end of the war--Negro dignity waxes big. In November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. As the new President was in sympathy with those who wished to abolish slavery, and as the Southern States were mostly inhabited by large landholders possessing thousands of slaves, this election was felt to doom their ascendancy unless they could resist the will of the North. Therefore, on the 17th of December a convention of the State of South Carolina was held at Charleston, which formally repealed their acceptance of the United States Constitution. Neither side at first foresaw the results of secession. Each thought the other would offer little resistance. The North were totally unprepared for war; the South were weakened by internal dissensions, but they fought as long as they had any soldiers left, and at last “robbed the cradle and the grave.” The South were in the end quite exhausted, while the North seemed to gather new strength every month. As the war went on the soldiers of the South, or Confederates, wore out their clothes, and could not replace them. Things were so scarce and dear that it became a proverb, “In going to market, you take your money in your basket and bring your purchases home in your pocket.” Planters in the South had to borrow money to support their hordes of negroes in idleness while they themselves were away at the front. On the 4th of March Lincoln formally entered on office. Secession, he said, meant rebellion. The Constitution must be preserved, if necessary, even by force. Major Anderson, who held a small fort in Charleston Harbour for the North, spiked his guns and moved into Fort Sumter, also in the harbour. This was considered an act of war, and Fort Sumter was bombarded and taken. The little town was full of excited soldiers, singing and shouting. We have a peep of what was going on and what it felt like in Mrs. Chestnut’s diary for the 12th of April: