The President addressed himself with energy to the task which confronted
him. But seven States had yet enrolled in the Confederacy. Of four more
he felt sure. The first attempt to coerce a Southern State by force of
arms would close the ranks with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and
Arkansas by his side. Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were peopled by
the South and the institution of Slavery bound them in a common cause.
And yet the defense of these eleven Southern States with their five
million white population and four million blacks was a task to stagger
the imagination of the greatest statesman of any age. This vast
territory would present an open front on land of more than a thousand
miles without a single natural barrier. Its sea coast presented three
thousand miles of water front--open to the attack of the navy. This
enormous coast of undefended shore was pierced by river after river
whose broad, deep waters would carry the gunboats of an enemy into the
heart of the South.
The audacity of our fathers in challenging the power of Great Britain
was reasonable in comparison with the madness of the South's challenge
to the North. Three thousand miles of storm-tossed ocean defended our
Revolutionary ancestors from the base of the enemy supplies.
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