Augusta County, a Whig and Union center, and Rockingham, an equally strong Democratic Union county, each contributed fifteen hundred soldiers to the new cause. Women not only began to prepare the equipment for their men, but many of them began to arm and practice themselves. Boys from ten to fourteen were daily drilling. In Petersburg three hundred free negroes offered their services to fight or to ditch and dig.
The bitterness of the answers of the Southern Governors from the Border States yet in the Union amazed the President at Washington.
His demand for troops was refused in tones of scorn and defiance.
"The State will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States."
Governor Harris telegraphed from Nashville:
"The State of Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand if necessary for the defense of her rights."
The message of Governor Ellis of North Carolina was equally emphatic:
"I will be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of our country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people."
Governor Jackson of Missouri was indignant beyond all others:
"Your requisition in my judgment is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary--its objects inhuman and diabolical."
Tennessee followed Virginia by seceding on May 6. Arkansas on May 18, and North Carolina by unanimous vote on May 21.
North Carolina had been slow to announce her final separation from the old Union. But she had been prompt in proclaiming her own sovereign rights within her territory when the National Government had dared to call them in question. On the day the President had issued his proclamation she seized Fort Macon at Beaufort. Fort Caswell was taken and garrisoned by her volunteers, and on April 19, the arsenal at Fayetteville was captured without bloodshed. The value of this achievement to the South was incalculable. The Confederacy thus secured sixty-five thousand stand of arms, of which twenty-eight thousand were of the most modern pattern.
Virginia had seceded on April 17 and immediately moved to secure under the resumption of her complete sovereignty all the arms, munitions of war, ship stores and military posts within her borders. Two posts of tremendous importance she attempted to seize at once--the great navy yard at Norfolk and the arsenal and shops at Harper's Ferry. The navy yard contained a magnificent dry dock worth millions, huge ship houses, supplies, ammunition, small arms and cannon, and had lying in its basin several vessels of war, complete and incomplete.