APRIL 23, 1861:
Stephen A. Douglas, who lost to Abraham
Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860, appeals to the public to support
the President and the Union during an unscheduled whistlestop in Columbus,
Ohio.
The war, Douglas told the crowd, was not about “the Negro
question,” but rather about free commerce and free trade. Rebels controlled the
Mississippi River and interrupted its free navigation, he explained.
Douglas
“called upon all men, without respect to party, to rally to the defence of the
Government and its constitutional head, and for the maintenance of the National
Constitution.”
On this
same day, Robert E. Lee accepts command of all Virginia State Forces.
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