and an enthusiastic secessionist. Boyd later recalled witnessing that, when news of South Carolina's secession from the United States reached them at the Seminary, "Sherman burst out crying, and began, in his nervous way, pacing the floor and deprecating the step which he feared might bring destruction on the whole country." In what some authors have seen as an accurate prophecy of the conflict that would engulf the United States during the next four years, Boyd recalled Sherman declaring: In January 1861, as more Southern states seceded from the Union, Sherman was required to take receipt of arms surrendered to the Louisiana State Militia by the U.S. arsenal at Baton Rouge. Instead of complying, he resigned his position as superintendent, declaring to the governor of Louisiana that "on no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to or in defiance of the old Government of the United States." St. Louis interlude Sherman departed Louisiana and traveled to Washington, D.C., possibly in the hope of securing a position in the U.S. Army. At the White House, Sherman met with Abraham Lincoln a few days after his inauguration as president of the United States. Sherman expressed grave concerns about the North's poor state of preparedness for the looming civil war, but he found Lincoln unresponsive. Sherman then moved to St. Louis to become president of a streetcar company called the "Fifth Street Railroad". Thus, he was living in the border state of Missouri as the secession crisis reached its climax. While trying to hold himself aloof from politics, he observed first-hand the efforts of Congressman Frank Blair, who later served under Sherman in the U.S. Army, to keep Missouri in the Union. In early April, Sherman declined Montgomery Blair's offer of the administrative position of chief clerk in the War Department, despite Blair's promise that it would be followed by nomination as Assistant Secretary of War after the U.S. Congress assembled in July. After the April 12–13 bombardment of Fort Sumter and its subsequent capture by the Confederacy, Sherman hesitated about committing to military service. He privately ridiculed Lincoln's call for 75,000 three-month volunteers to quell secession, reportedly saying: "Why, you might as well attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt-gun." In May, however, he offered himself for service in the regular Army. Senator John Sherman (his younger brother and a