Civil War Service
President Abraham Lincoln answered the Southern attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, by calling out ". . . the militia of the several states ... to suppress ..." the rebellion.
This move alienated many undecided citizens of the border states, prompting Virginia to secede from the Union and pushing Maryland dangerously close to withdrawing. These developments left both Washington, D.C., the Federal capital, and Norfolk, Virginia, the home of the Nation's most important naval base, isolated and all but defenseless.
Read more about this topic: USS Allegheny (1847)
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or service:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn’t.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)