(as documented by Pollard). He had been visited by a number of governors of the Northern States. They offered him money and men;(State militias were offered up to Lincoln to encourage him to attack the South, and here's who was doing the offering: Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island, Governor Oliver Perry Morton of Indiana, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, Governor Andrew Curtain of Pennsylvania, and Governor Austin Blair of Michigan) but it was understood that nothing would be done in the way of calling out the State militia and opening special credits, until the Southern revolutionists should be actually in aggression to the authority of the Federal government.
Another appeal was still more effectively urged. It was the argument of the partisan. The report of the intended evacuation of Fort Sumter, and the apparent vacillation of the administration, were producing disaffection in the Black Republican party.
This party had shown a considerable loss of strength in the municipal elections in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other parts of the West they had lost two congressmen in Connecticut and two in Rhode Island.
The low tariff, too, of the Southern Confederacy, brought into competition with the high protective tariff which the Black Republican majority in Congress had adopted, and which was popularly known as “the Morrill Tariff,” was threatening serious disaster to the interests of New England and Pennsylvania, and was indicating the necessity of the repeal of a law which was considered as an indispensable party measure by the most of Mr. Lincoln’s constituents.