CIVIL WAR BEGINS
General Dru brought together an army of fifty thousand men at Madison
and about forty thousand near Des Moines, and recruits were coming in
rapidly.
President Rockland had concentrated twenty thousand regulars and thirty
thousand militia at Chicago, and had given command to Major General
Newton, he who, several years previously, won the first medal given by
the War Department for the best solution of the military problem.
The President also made a call for two hundred thousand volunteers. The
response was in no way satisfactory, so he issued a formal demand upon
each state to furnish its quota.
The states that were in sympathy with his administration responded, the
others ignored the call.
General Dru learned that large reinforcements had been ordered to
Chicago, and he therefore at once moved upon that place. He had a fair
equipment of artillery, considering he was wholly dependent upon that
belonging to the militia of those states that had ranged themselves upon
his side, and at several points in the West, he had seized factories and
plants making powder, guns, clothing and camp equipment. He ordered the
Iowa division to advance at the same time, and the two forces were
joined at a point about fifty miles south of Chicago.
General Newton was daily expecting reënforcements, but they failed to
reach him before Dru made it impossible for them to pass through.
Newton at first thought to attack the Iowa division and defeat it, and
then meet the Wisconsin division, but he hesitated to leave Chicago lest
Dru should take the place during his absence.
With both divisions united, and with recruits constantly arriving, Dru
had an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men.
Failing to obtain the looked-for reënforcements and seeing the
hopelessness of opposing so large a force, Newton began secretly to
evacuate Chicago by way of the Lakes, Dru having completely cut him off
by land.
He succeeded in removing his army to Buffalo, where President Rockland
had concentrated more than one hundred thousand troops.
When Dru found General Newton had evacuated Chicago, he occupied it, and
then moved further east, in order to hold the states of Michigan,
Indiana and Western Ohio.
This gave him the control of the West, and he endeavored as nearly as
possible to cut off the food supply of the East. In order to tighten
further the difficulty of obtaining supplies, he occupied Duluth and all
the Lake ports as far east as Cleveland, which city the Government held,
and which was their furthest western line.
Canada was still open as a means of food supply to the East, as were all
the ports of the Atlantic seaboard as far south as Charleston.
So the sum of the situation was that the East, so far west as the middle
of Ohio, and as far south as West Virginia, inclusive of that state, was
in the hands of the Government.
Western Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, while occupied by General
Dru, were divided in their sympathies. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and every
state west of the Mississippi, were strongly against the Government.
The South, as a whole, was negligible, though Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee and Missouri were largely divided in sentiment. That part of
the South lying below the border states was in sympathy with the
insurgents.
The contest had come to be thought of as a conflict between Senator
Selwyn on the one hand, and what he represented, and Philip Dru on the
other, and what he stood for. These two were known to be the dominating
forces on either side.
The contestants, on the face of things, seemed not unevenly matched,
but, as a matter of fact, the conscience of the great mass of the
people, East and West, was on Dru's side, for it was known that he was
contending for those things which would permit the Nation to become
again a land of freedom in its truest and highest sense, a land where
the rule of law prevailed, a land of equal opportunity, a land where
justice would be meted out alike to the high and low with a steady and
impartial hand.