04/15/1861
President Lincoln, responding to the firing on Fort Sumter, issued a proclamation calling for "the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand ... to cause the laws to be duly executed." Their first duty would be to "re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union." The statement also ordered a special session of both houses of congress to convene at noon on July 4, 1861. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation:
Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln Association, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 4 (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 332-333