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 and/or service:
“Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Come Vitus, are we men, or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaros fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)