The Herald, in the same issue in which the surrender of the fort and the " dissolution of the Union " was announced, stated that a " preliminary meeting " had been held on Saturday evening, at which steps were taken to call a great mass-meeting, to " force " the administration to surrender, and desist fi-om Mr. Lincoln's expressed intention to " coerce the seceding States." Westchester County was represented at this preliminary meeting by some prominent officials, who held to the extreme Democratic doctrine of " States rights."

On Monday morning, April loth, a])peared Mr. Lincoln's proclamation. It called for seventy-five thousand militia, for three months, to suppress the Rebellion. That proclamation had the effect of a spark to a train of gunpowder in the city of New York, and the effect was felt in the county of Westchester in a proportionate degree. Men who had been waiting, sick at heart, in view of the quiet way in which the government was apparently submitting to destruction, realized that the end of submission had come at last, and that public opinion might be invoked to repel the snicide of a nation. Then came

HISTOK^ OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

the sudden outburst, in the city, of a popular anger, which filled the streets, in five minutes from the first rush into the open air, with a dense crowd of excited men, whose only purpose seemed to be to make every Democratic newspaper in New York " hang out the flag." They were roused at last.