With the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor by forces of the new Confederate States of America, fifty years of dispute over slavery became a contest of arms, and news of Fort Sumter's fall reached Augusta by telegraph on the afternoon of the surrender on April 12, 1861. Within weeks Augusta became Maine's seat of war after Governor Washburn called the Legislature into session on April 22, and it authorized the raising of 10 regiments and a million dollars to put down the rebellion of the Southern states. Augusta then became an armed camp, with streets filled with soldiers and open spaces occupied by army camps and hospitals. Maine went on to raise 32 infantry regiments, 2 cavalry regiments, 7 artillery batteries, and numerous other units, many of them organized in Augusta at Capital Park, Camp Keyes, and the Kennebec Arsenal. Augusta's citizens rallied to the Union, and over the next four years sent hundreds of their sons into the Union army and navy, including companies in the 3rd, 19th, and 21st Maine Infantry Regiments, while others served in other units, in regiments from other states, and in the Regular army and navy. Augusta citizens fought for the Union on battlefields from New Mexico to Louisiana and Virginia, and over 130 gave their lives for the Union, while several citizens also fought for the Confederacy. Others held high places in the United States Government, including Lot Morrill in the U.S. Senate and John Potter in the House of Representatives, while Samuel Cony of Augusta became Maine's last war governor and General Seth Williams became Adjutant General of the Army of the Potomac and witnessed Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Augusta's city government worked to raise troops, support their dependents, and keep law and order, while its citizens sent off Maine regiments and welcomed returning regiments with band music and banquets. Maine's statewide war effort was guided from the State House in Augusta, where orders were issued, laws passed, and monies raised with the leadership of Maine Adjutant General John L. Hodsdon of Bangor. On April 9, 1865, Augusta received news of Lee's capitulation, and less than a week later, after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the city held a solemn funeral service at the Kennebec County Court House. Augusta then welcomed home returning Maine regiments, marked Independence Day 1865 with grand parade floats, soldiers, and citizens, and later saw the war fade into memory after the dedication of the city's Civil War monument in 1882, where veterans gathered each Memorial Day until 1940, when the city's last Civil War veteran died, to remember the time when Maine's capital city and its citizens fully engaged in what Lincoln called the "People's Contest."