Bill Federer:
Less than two months after Lincoln was inaugurated President, the Civil War began this day, April 12, 1861, with Confederate troops in Charleston, South Carolina, firing upon Fort Sumter.The Confederate Army was unstoppable, twice winning battles at Bull Run,
Virginia, just twenty miles from Washington, D.C., forcing the Union troops
to retreat to the fortifications of the Capitol. It wasn't until the Battle of Gettysburg, over two years into the war, that the tide began to turn. President Lincoln confided "I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
His prayers, it would seem, were answered.