William Arnold Spicer (1845-1913) was the author of: The Flag Replaced on Sumter: A Personal Narrative (1885) and History of the Ninth and Tenth Regiments Rhode Island Volunteers, and the Tenth Rhode Island Battery, in the Union Army in 1862 (1892). "Immediately upon the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, in November, 1860, a predetermined plan of secession was entered upon by the leading public men of the South, on the plea that his election was dangerous the interests of slavery. In February, 1861, seven of the slave States having united in the movement, an independent government was organized, under the name of the Southern Confederacy, and Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President with great pomp, at Montgomery, Alabama; so that on the fourth of March, the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration at Washington, the flag of the United States was flying at only three points south of the Capital, viz: Fort Sumter, Fort Pickens, and Key West. "