8 Lincoln and the First Shot: A Study of Deceit and Deception John V. Denson

In almost every poll of public opinion or assessment by professional historians which has been published since World War II, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt rank in the top three as two of our “greatest.”[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., who conducted the first poll of historians in 1948, concluded that the ratings as to “greatness” were heavily influenced by a particular president’s connection with “some turning point in our history.”[2] Undoubtedly, the American Civil War and World War II were major “turning points” in American history and therefore greatly influenced the high ratings of these two presidents. The position of “greatness,” however, necessarily assumes that neither of these presidents had any guilt in bringing on these wars. Instead, it is assumed that both presidents were peace-seekers, trying to lead the nation toward a reconciliation of its problems and trying to avoid a war until the enemy fired the first shot and forced an unwanted war upon these presidents and the American people.

The Roman lawyer Cicero struggled with the question of what is a “just war,” as did the Christian philosophers of the Medieval period, from Augustus to Aquinas. Later, the father of international law, the Dutchman Hugo Grotius, addressed the question also because he was concerned that wars which Christians might fight would be done with a clear conscience toward God. As a result of these developing ideas, Western political leaders have tried to convince their citizens or subjects that their wars met one of the main criteria; that is, that the wars were “defensive.” President John F. Kennedy declared in January 1961 that “Our arms will never be used to strike the first blow in any attack. . . . It is our national tradition.”[3] It has always been important to American presidents to try to demonstrate that the enemy fired the first shot and started the war.

Those who support the mythology that surrounds Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt have tried to resist the nagging question which continues to assert itself about whether these presidents actually maneuvered the enemy into firing the first shot in order to produce wars that they wanted but that the people did not. In both cases, war caused great power and prestige to flow to the presidency, and most of the imagined “greatness” of these two presidents therefore arises from their perceived conduct as war leaders and protectors of “American liberty and rights.” The question concerning the Lincoln administration will be dealt with here and a subsequent chapter will examine President Franklin Roosevelt. Nonetheless, the question in regard to both is whether they provoked the enemy into firing the first shot.

Most wars are fought for economic reasons, but the general population will rarely rally around the flag for such causes; therefore, other reasons are usually given for the purpose of any war, in order to persuade mothers and fathers to send their sons off to an uncertain future which could very easily result in their return in body bags. For this reason, both the Civil War and World War II have been clothed in a mythology which states that the Civil War was fought for the purpose of “abolishing slavery” and World War II was fought to oppose “tyranny” or “Fascism.”

The investigation of why the South fired the first shot at Fort Sumter raises the question of whether the firing on Fort Sumter by the South started the war or whether there were preceding, provocative, and precipitating acts on the part of President Lincoln and his administration which caused the South to fire first.

One of the essential reasons the South wanted out of the Union was to avoid economic exploitation by the North, and one of the main reasons the Northern political and economic interests refused to allow the South to secede was that they wanted to continue this economic exploitation. The long-standing dispute over slavery that existed between the North and South was not whether slavery should be abolished where it already existed but, rather, whether slavery should be expanded into the new territories and new states. The small but vociferous band of abolitionists in the North were the only ones calling for the abolition of slavery where it already existed and could be accomplished through the secession of the North. The abolitionists argued that secession would relieve the North from the obligation to enforce the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, which required the North to return slaves. Both Horace Greely, owner of the New York Tribune, and the abolitionist Harry Ward Beecher said, “Let the South go.”[4] The abolitionists, however, were very unpopular in the North, primarily because secession was not a popular issue there just before the Civil War, although it had been in previous times.[5] The concern of the North was that if slavery was expanded into new states, the South would have more representation in Congress in both the House and Senate, thereby allowing the South to protect itself from economic exploitation.

The story of the cause of the Civil War goes all the way back to the Constitutional Convention in which one of the major disputes was whether a simple majority vote or a two-thirds vote would be required for the passage of the Navigation Acts, which included the tariff legislation. Both at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the Civil War, the tariff constituted the primary (more than 80 percent) of the revenue for the federal government. George Mason, one of the Virginia delegates to the Constitutional Convention, argued for a two-thirds vote as follows:

If the Government is to be lasting, it must be founded in the confidence and affections of the people, and must be so constructed as to obtain these. The Majority will be governed by their interests. The Southern States are the minority in both Houses. Is it to be expected that they will deliver themselves bound hand & foot to the Eastern States, and enable them to exclaim, in the words of Cromwell on a certain occasion—“the lord hath delivered them into our hands.”[6]

Fellow Virginia delegate James Madison, who was a strong supporter of the Constitution and, in fact, is known to us today as “The Father of the Constitution,” resisted Mason’s request for a two-thirds vote and argued that there would be no exploitation of the South if there was a simple majority vote to enact tariff legislation.[7] The final draft of the Constitution that was approved in Philadelphia had only a simple majority requirement for tariff legislation, and Mason refused to sign the document. One writer, in analyzing this dispute over the tariff between Mason and Madison—which later became the most important cause of the American Civil War—shows that Mason continued his opposition to the Constitution in the Virginia ratification convention by continuing to demand a two-thirds vote on any tariff legislation.[8]

At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the North had a larger population than the South, but there was an attempt to compensate for this by counting a fraction of the slave population as part of the total population for determining representation in the House of Representatives—a concept that became known as the “federal ratio.” One of the reasons the Northern politicians opposed slavery was that it gave the South too much political power. Another factor was that the North quickly adapted to the Industrial Revolution which had started in England and then crossed the Atlantic, causing the North to become more industrial than agricultural by 1820. The new industrial jobs caused a rapid increase in the population of the North, which gave it much more representation in the House of Representatives, but this factor was partially balanced by the practice of admitting two new states at a time with one being a slave state and the other being a free state (so that representation in the Senate was equal). The South also sought to protect itself by sending its most prominent citizens to Congress and by a close cooperation with Northern Democrats.

In 1824, Kentuckian Henry Clay made his famous “American System” speech and frankly admitted that the tariff should be high enough to protect “American” industry from manufactured imports from Europe, primarily England. A tariff levied on an import could be made high enough that a purchaser would be better off buying the Northern-made product. As the South was almost entirely an agricultural region, it had to buy almost all of its manufactured products either from Europe, and pay the protective tariff, or from Northern industries, and pay, in most cases, an excessive price. About three-fourths of the total tariff collected in the U.S. was paid by the Southerners. Another development which began to divide the North and South was that the political power of the North also allowed it to keep a vast majority of the tariff revenue and use it for “internal improvements,” such as building harbors and canals, which was, in effect, a corporate welfare program. The North claimed a right to do this under the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution, but the South objected, stating that this was an incorrect understanding of the meaning of this clause. Internal improvements were also a major part of Henry Clay’s “American System,” which in reality was a partnership between government and the business interests in the North.

In 1828, the North had enough political power to pass an extremely high protective tariff, which became known as the “Tariff of Abominations.” This led to the nullification movement in South Carolina in 1832 under the leadership of John C. Calhoun. South Carolina declared that the tariff was nullified or void in the state of South Carolina; however, a subsequent reduction in the tariff by Congress settled the problem temporarily. Charleston, South Carolina, was the primary focus of this entire battle because this was where most of the tariff was collected, and Fort Sumter, manned by federal troops, constituted the means for enforcement of the collection of the tariff. The tariff continued to be an extremely hot issue between the North and South up to the Civil War, with Henry Clay being both an instigator and pacificator of the conflict until his death in 1852.[9]

The new Republican Party, which had only come into existence in 1854, adopted a platform in 1860 that explicitly called for a high protective tariff and internal improvements and, therefore, was a direct threat to the South. Lincoln fully subscribed to this platform before and after his presidential nomination by the Republicans. Lincoln won his election with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, carrying only eighteen of thirty-three states, and he did not have a single electoral vote cast for him in the South. While Lincoln’s position on the tariff and internal improvements was an ominous economic sign, the South still had hope that Lincoln would not oppose secession. During Lincoln’s one term in Congress, he had been a vocal opponent of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846 and had supported the right of secession as a way of protesting the war. The threat of secession had been asserted, not only by the South because of the tariff, but by the North, especially New England, on numerous occasions: in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, at the Hartford Convention in opposition to the War of 1812, and then again, at the time of the Mexican War.[10] Lincoln proclaimed his strong endorsement of the right of secession in 1847 as follows:

Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.[11]

After the election of 1860, the new Republican Party was very much a minority in both the House and Senate, and it claimed only one Supreme Court justice. This new political party was made up of some abolitionists and former Democrats, but mostly former Whigs like Lincoln, who stood for a strong centralized government, a high protective tariff, internal improvements, a loose interpretation of the Constitution, and a partnership between big business in the North and government that would allow business to expand westward, and even to other countries, if necessary.

As soon as Lincoln was elected, attention again focused on South Carolina because of the tariff issue. There were three federal forts in the Charleston harbor, but Fort Sumter stood squarely in the middle of the channel and constituted the main weapon for enforcement of the tariff. Should South Carolina secede, it would be imperative to reclaim the fort. At the time of South Carolina’s coming into the Union, it had made a gift or deed of trust of the land and Fort Sumter to the federal government. Because the fort also provided the ultimate defense from invasion of the harbor, whoever controlled Fort Sumter would control Charleston, a key Southern city.

On December 9, 1860, all the congressmen from South Carolina met with President Buchanan in Washington and got a verbal pledge from him that he would not make any move to reinforce Fort Sumter.[12] Unknown to the South, President-elect Lincoln, who would not take office until March 4, 1861, communicated directly on December 12, 1860, with General Winfield Scott, head of the army under the Buchanan administration, and told him to be sure to hold and retake all federal forts in the South.[13] Soon thereafter, on December 20, South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union. Six days later, Major Robert Anderson, on his own initiative, moved his federal troops into Fort Sumter from Fort Moultrie, a nearby military installation. There was an immediate uproar throughout the South, and Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi asserted that this was an overt act of war on the part of President Buchanan, who indicated truthfully that he had not authorized this reinforcement of Fort Sumter.[14] Governor F.W. Pickens of South Carolina complained to President Buchanan and again received assurances from him that there would not be any further reinforcement of any forts in South Carolina, and especially Fort Sumter.[15]

Major Anderson wrote a letter to his commanding officer in Washington on December 26, 1860, reporting that he had one year’s supply of hospital stores as well as food provisions for about four months, which would be through April 26, 1861.[16] This food supply was that which was available in Fort Sumter, but Anderson quickly developed a good relationship with the mayor of Charleston and other local Charleston merchants, so that from that point on, he was getting daily supplies from grocers and butchers. Therefore, Anderson was in no danger of lack of food supplies from this point up until just a few days before the firing on Fort Sumter. Also, following Anderson’s move to Fort Sumter, Secretary of War Floyd resigned, stating that Anderson’s action was an act of bad faith on the part of the Buchanan administration which he could no longer support.[17]

Before continuing with the full story of Fort Sumter, it is important to look at the other key fort that was a focal point of dispute between the North and South at this time—that is, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, Florida—because this also sheds light upon Lincoln’s intentions and actions at Fort Sumter. While Fort Pickens was not a primary tariff collection port, it was an essential military installation for the Southern part of the United States and for the Confederacy. The state of Florida seceded from the Union on January 10, 1861, and through its former U.S. senator, Stephen Mallory, and its governor, made an immediate demand upon President Buchanan on January 15, for the return of Fort Pickens and the immediate evacuation of all federal troops. After much discussion and threats from both sides, the state of Florida and the Buchanan administration entered into a formal truce on January 29. The agreement was that if there was no reinforcement of Fort Pickens by the North, then the South would not fire upon the fort, which would allow time for the parties to attempt to work out their other differences.

After Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, he violated this truce by issuing secret executive orders on March 11 and 12 to send reinforcements to Fort Pickens. The order was actually signed by General Winfield Scott, who kept the same position in the Lincoln administration as he had in the previous administration as head of the army. When Captain Adams of the U.S. Navy, who was in charge of Fort Pickens, received the order from General Scott in March 1861 to send out boats to pick up reinforcements on the warships that were near the harbor, Adams refused to obey the order. Adams was very familiar with the terms of the truce and thought there had been some misunderstanding by the new administration. He knew this reinforcement was an explicit violation of the agreement without any provocation on the part of the South. He fully realized that this act alone would start the war. Furthermore, as a captain in the navy, he was unwilling to take an order from General Scott, who was head of the army, so he sent word back that he wanted clarification from his naval commander.[18]

On April 1, President Lincoln issued a series of secret executive orders, some over his name and some over the name of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, to send troops to reinforce Fort Pickens. Captain M.C. Meigs was present in the office of the president when he issued these orders, and Meigs wrote a letter dated April 6, in which he explained his reaction to the events he had observed on April 1.

While the mere throwing of a few men into Fort Pickens may seem a small operation, the opening of the campaign is a great one. Unless this movement is followed up by the navy and supported by ample supplies . . . it will be a failure. This is the beginning of the war.[19]

Captain Meigs clearly saw that the act of reinforcement was an act of war and violated the truce that existed between the United States and Florida (and the Confederacy), and that war was being started secretly by the act of the president without any consultation with Congress. The warships came to Pensacola harbor, but because reinforcement actually did not take place until the night of April 12 under the complete cover of darkness, it was not perceived by the South until the next day.[20] Negotiations continued, however, after the South discovered the violation of the truce, and the military commanders were still exchanging communications until April 17, before any shots were fired.[21]

Later, after the war had started and Lincoln had addressed Congress on July 4, 1861, Congress made a written inquiry dated July 19, requesting documents about the armistice at Fort Pickens. President Lincoln replied by sending Navy Secretary Welles to Congress with a written message dated July 30, in which the president declined to produce any documents, claiming executive privilege, and stating “it is believed the communication of the information called for would not, at this time, comport with the public interest.”[22]

Returning now to the developments at Fort Sumter, a major event occurred there on January 9, 1861. Without prior notice to or knowledge of Major Anderson at Fort Sumter, a merchant ship named Star of the West entered Charleston harbor and headed toward Fort Sumter. It had been learned by the South, just prior to this event, that hidden below the deck were two hundred armed soldiers with ammunition, and supplies; therefore, the South Carolina troops fired a shot across the bow as a warning to the ship, which then reversed its course and left the area. Secretary of Interior Thompson resigned his position in the Buchanan administration over this incident, saying that it indicated bad faith on the part of the administration.[23] President Buchanan again claimed that the event occurred without his authority, but actually he had authorized the attempt to reinforce and then unsuccessfully tried to revoke the order.[24] On January 12, Governor Pickens of South Carolina again demanded the return of the fort, but President Buchanan stated he had no authority to do so.[25] Even though the fort had been a gift from South Carolina to the Union, South Carolina was willing to pay fair-market value for all of the land and improvements in exchange for its return and the evacuation of the federal troops. Governor Pickens at this time made it clear to President Buchanan and his administration, a position which soon became public knowledge, that any future attempt by any ship to provide reinforcements would immediately cause South Carolina to fire directly upon the ship and Fort Sumter.[26] Also in the discussions with President Buchanan, it was pointed out that simply the act of sending the ship for reinforcement was an act of war and would not be tolerated.[27]

On February 4, the Confederate government had taken over jurisdiction of all federal property still located in the South, which included both Forts Sumter and Pickens.[28] On February 6, President Buchanan also reaffirmed the armistice in regard to Fort Pickens to the effect that there would be no further reinforcements. As he had earlier indicated, this was also the case at Fort Sumter. In return, the South would not fire on either fort as long as no reinforcement was attempted.

On February 7, retired Navy Captain Gustavus Fox approached the Buchanan administration and General Winfield Scott, in particular, with his secret plan to reinforce Fort Sumter successfully. It called for a nighttime maneuver involving several tugs to go first, pulling whaling boats full of men and supplies, and then several warships with more troops to follow. General Scott presented Fox and his plan to Secretary of War Holt, who liked the plan, but on the next day Scott informed Fox that any plans to reinforce Fort Sumter were being abandoned by the Buchanan administration.[29]

On March 2, President Buchanan signed the Morrill Tariff into law, which was the highest protective tariff in American history, and by early 1862, it reached the average amount of 47.06 percent.[30] The Morrill Tariff remained the cornerstone policy of the Republican Party up through the twentieth century. President Buchanan was from Pennsylvania, a traditional high-tariff state, and even though he was leaving office in two days, he wanted to protect his political career by signing this act, which was popular in Pennsylvania but an ominous threat to the South. Two days later, on March 4, the nation waited with great anticipation for President Lincoln’s Inaugural Address. Lincoln addressed the question of slavery directly and openly by quoting from one of his previously published speeches:

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.[31]

Lincoln had also required each of his cabinet members to take a solemn pledge that they would enforce the Constitution, and particularly the fugitive slave clause, which required the North to return fugitive slaves to the South.[32] Lincoln specifically promised in his speech to enforce this clause. Furthermore, historian David Potter points out that:

Lincoln returned, later in his speech, to the question of Constitutional protection for slavery in the states. He alluded to the proposed Thirteenth Amendment, just passed by Congress, to guarantee slavery in the states, and added that, although he wished to speak of general policy, rather than specific measures, he would say that, holding such a guarantee to be implied in the existing Constitution, “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”[33]

President Lincoln thereby completely removed the slavery issue from contention between the North and South by promising to enforce the fugitive slave clause and supporting a Constitutional amendment which would explicitly protect slavery. The protection for slavery had only been implied in the original Constitution in three places; that is, the fugitive slave clause, the ban on the slave trade, and the three-fifths ratio clause.

Lincoln apologists often point to the following concluding gesture to the South in the Inaugural Address to prove that he wanted peace instead of war:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.[34]

The mythology which has surrounded Lincoln usually cites the above quotation as showing that Lincoln was doing everything within his power to prevent a war. However, immediately after his Inaugural Address, the South considered the speech to have been a declaration of war by Lincoln, even though Lincoln said nothing that threatened the institution of slavery in the South. Therefore, there must have been other words in his address which caused the South to consider that he had declared war. We find those words in his speech:

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.[35]

Senator Wigfall of Texas immediately notified Governor Pickens that the address meant war sooner or later, and in all likelihood, no time should be lost in sending reinforcements to Fort Sumter.[36] Another prominent Southerner, L.Q. Washington, who was in Washington, D.C., and heard the address, forwarded to Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Walker a letter echoing Wig-fall’s opinion, which undoubtedly was shared with the members of the Confederate cabinet. The letter stated:

We all put the same construction on the inaugural, which we carefully went over together. We agreed that it was Lincoln’s purpose at once to attempt the collection of the revenue, to reenforce and hold Forts Sumter and Pickens, and to retake the other places.

We believe that these plans will be put into execution immediately. I learned five or six United States ships are in New York Harbor, all ready to start. The United States steamer Pawnee came here the other day suddenly from Philadelphia, fully provisioned and ready to go to sea.[37]

Furthermore, President Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address, repudiated his prior stand taken during the U.S.-Mexican War that secession was a “most valuable, a most sacred right” of each state within the Union and proclaimed that “no state upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union.”[38] Later, during the war, however, Lincoln again recognized the right of forty-nine counties to secede from Virginia and to become the new state of West Virginia. The creation of the new state in this manner violated Article V, Section 3, of the Constitution, but nevertheless took place solely because of the pledge of loyalty of the residents of West Virginia. Of course, this added two new senators and additional representatives, who were all loyal to Lincoln.

In accordance with the resolution of the Confederate Congress, President Davis appointed three commissioners to negotiate with the United States all questions of disagreement between the two governments.[39] The appointments took place on February 25, and reached Washington on March 5, the day after Lincoln’s inauguration. The Confederate government was offering to assume its proportion of any federal debt and pay fair market value for all federal property remaining within the seceding states. It also sought recognition of its independence as a separate government by the Lincoln administration. Davis had stated that the South simply wanted to be let alone and constituted no threat to the existing government in Washington: “We seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind . . . all we ask is to be let alone.”[40]

President Lincoln refused to see the commissioners, refused to negotiate any peace terms, and, furthermore, refused to recognize the Confederate government. In regard to Fort Sumter, he continued to deal only with Governor Pickens of South Carolina. The commissioners were never able to speak directly with President Lincoln; and, as will be shown in more detail later, their negotiations had to go through two U.S. Supreme Court justices to Secretary of State Seward, who led them to believe that he spoke for the Lincoln administration.

Meanwhile, on March 9, President Lincoln asked his primary military adviser, General Scott, to investigate Major Anderson’s condition at Fort Sumter and advise him on the feasibility of reinforcement. The diary of Attorney General Edward Bates reveals that a cabinet meeting was held on March 9 to consider the desirability of sending reinforcements to Charleston. The army and navy military representatives presented their opinions, which were recorded by Bates with the following language in his diary: “The naval men have convinced me fully that the thing can be done, and yet as the doing of it would be almost certain to begin the war . . . I am willing to yield to the military counsel and evacuate Fort Sumter.”[41] However, on March 11, as we have already seen, President Lincoln told General Scott to issue an order to reinforce Fort Pickens, which order was refused by Captain Adams. Also, on March 11, Senator Wigfall of Texas telegraphed General Beauregard stating that the opinion in Washington was that there had been a cabinet meeting, and it had been decided that Anderson would be ordered to evacuate Fort Sumter within five days.[42] On March 12, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair contacted his brother-in-law, retired naval officer Gustavus Fox, and took him personally to see President Lincoln in order to explain his reinforcement plan which had been rejected by the Buchanan administration.[43] After hearing Fox’s plan, as well as the recommendation of the military advisers, including Generals Scott and Totten, Lincoln called another cabinet meeting for March 15 and asked for each member of his cabinet to respond in writing about what should be done regarding Fort Sumter. All the cabinet members opposed in writing any reinforcement of Fort Sumter, except Postmaster General Blair, who offered to resign from the cabinet when the Fox plan was rejected.[44] Secretary of State Seward, who was generally considered the number two man to Lincoln, consistently opposed any reinforcement of Fort Sumter because he thought it would initiate a war with the South. His written note to the president contained these words:

Suppose the expedition successful, we have then a garrison in Fort Sumter that can defy assault for six months. What is it to do then? Is it to make war by opening its batteries and attempting to demolish the defenses of the Carolinians? . . . I may be asked whether I would in no case, and at no time advise force—whether I propose to give up everything? I reply no. I would not initiate war to regain a useless and unnecessary position on the soil of the seceding States.[45]

Secretary of Treasury Chase said in his note to the president:

If the attempt will so inflame civil war as to involve an immediate necessity for the enlistment of armies and the expedition of millions, I cannot advise it in the existing circumstances of the country and in the present condition of the national finances.[46]

Secretary of War Cameron advised against reinforcement with these words:

Whatever might have been done as late as a month ago, it is too sadly evident that it cannot now be done without the sacrifice of life and treasure not at all commensurate with the object to be attained; and as the abandonment of the fort in a few weeks, sooner or later, appears to be an inevitable necessity, it seems to me that the sooner it is done the better.[47]

Cameron also stated that:

The proposition presented by Mr. Fox, so sincerely entertained and ably advocated, would be entitled to my favorable consideration if, with all the light before me and in the face of so many distinguished military authorities on the other side, I did not believe that the attempt to carry it into effect would initiate a bloody and protracted conflict.[48]

Secretary of Navy Welles opposed either sending provisions or reinforcing the fort with troops and stated:

By sending, or attempting to send provisions into Sumter, will not war be precipitated? It may be impossible to escape it under any course of policy that may be pursued, but I am not prepared to advise a course that would provoke hostilities. It does not appear to me that the dignity, strength, or character of the government will be promoted by an attempt to provision Sumter in the manner proposed, even should it succeed, while a failure would be attended with untold disaster.[49]

Attorney General Bates opposed the plan with these words:

The possession of the fort, as we now hold it, does not enable us to collect the revenue or enforce the laws of commercial navigation. It may indeed involve a point of honor or a point of pride, but I do not see any great national interest involved in the bare fact of holding the fort as we now hold it.[50]

General Scott and General Totten both appeared before the cabinet meeting, and Scott submitted a written memorandum stating his military opinion. He not only opposed the Fox plan, but recommended that Forts Sumter and Pickens be evacuated immediately. He further stated that Captain Fox’s plan of simply making the attempt to approach the Fort with the ships “will inevitably involve a collision.”[51] Scott further pointed out that even if the plan was successful, they would not be able to hold the fort for any appreciable time. General Scott stated also that the evacuation of Forts Sumter and Pickens would strongly impress to the eight remaining slave states that had not seceded and this might hold them in the Union.[52] President Lincoln received the advice both from the military officers and his cabinet and, with only one member of the cabinet supporting the plan, it was determined not to implement the Fox plan since the mere attempt to initiate the plan would undoubtedly cause a war.

Charles W. Ramsdell, in his excellent study of all the official records and diaries of the people involved, also points out:

One plan which he [Lincoln] seems to have entertained for a short while, just after the adverse cabinet vote on relieving Sumter, contemplated the collection of customs duties on revenue vessels, supported by ships of war, just outside the Confederate ports; and there were hints in the press that Anderson’s force was to be withdrawn to a ship off Charleston. If it were seriously considered, the plan was soon abandoned, possibly because of legal impediments or more probably because it did not fully meet the needs of the situation.[53]

Fox was a very persistent person, however, and, subsequent to this cabinet meeting, he asked Lincoln if he could go to Fort Sumter before a final decision was made in order to see for himself the conditions that were there. Lincoln had General Scott authorize a visit by Fox to Charleston to meet with Major Anderson, which Fox did on March 22. Also on that date, President Lincoln authorized two personal delegates, S.A. Hurlbut and Ward H. Lamon, to go to South Carolina. Hurlbut was to determine if there was any Unionist sympathy within South Carolina and particularly in Charleston. Lamon was a longtime trusted friend of the president, having been his law partner, and he was to visit both Governor Pickens and Major Anderson at Fort Sumter.[54]

Fox met directly with Anderson, who informed him that it would be impossible to reinforce the fort from the sea. Anderson stated that the only way to reinforce the fort successfully would be to have a massive army come from Morris Island. Anderson further warned Fox that any attempts to send reinforcements from the sea would cause the South to fire, thereby causing an unnecessary war. It would be a provocative act merely to make the attempt.[55] Anderson also informed Fox that there was no need for food, as he had an agreement with Governor Pickens and merchants in Charleston to furnish fresh groceries and meat on a daily basis. Anderson had already written his superior officers in Washington, “I do hope that no attempt will be made by our friends to throw supplies in; their doing so would do more harm than good.”[56]

Hurlbut found that there was no significant amount of Unionist sympathy in Charleston, and therefore it could not be depended upon for any assistance. Lamon met with Governor Pickens and represented to him that he had come to arrange for the removal of Major Anderson and his entire garrison, and even described the type of ships that would come later to remove the troops. He informed Governor Pickens that he would be coming back soon and personally participating in the removal of the troops.[57] Lamon also learned from Governor Pickens that any attempt to send any ships to Fort Sumter, even if only bringing supplies, would cause the South to fire on the fort.[58] In fact, both Hurlbut and Lamon reported back to the president the key information he was seeking and that would be essential for his cabinet meeting on March 29—that is, even sending supplies would cause the South to fire on the fort.[59]

Meanwhile, Congress was still in session and the U.S. Senate became interested in the negotiations and sent word to President Lincoln that they wanted to be informed about the matters regarding Fort Sumter. President Lincoln sent General Scott who testified that he had recommended abandonment of Fort Sumter and felt that this was imperative. The Senate then passed a resolution requesting that President Lincoln furnish them copies of all correspondence with Major Anderson, but Lincoln refused, claiming executive privilege in a document dated March 26, 1861.[60]

It became obvious to the public, and especially to those in Washington, D.C., that Lincoln’s refusal to offer any peace proposal or to meet with the Confederate commissioners was preventing any negotiations between the North and the South. Therefore, two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Samuel Nelson from the North and John Campbell from the South, approached Secretary of State Seward, and offered themselves as intermediators to meet with the commissioners and Seward in order to communicate peace offers, etc., and attempt to resolve the difficulties without a war. Seward began meeting with the justices soon after the cabinet meeting on March 15, and at that time, Justice Campbell received specific authority from Seward to write to President Jefferson Davis informing him that Fort Sumter would be evacuated within five days.[61] Once the commissioners had received such a strong statement from Seward, they dropped the demand for recognition of the South by Lincoln. Again, on March 21, Justice Campbell passed along a second note from Seward which stated Sumter would be evacuated, and Seward promised a further statement. Finally, on March 22, there was a third note authorized by Seward to be passed from Justice Campbell to the commissioners, and this note stated, “I [Secretary of State Seward] have still unabated confidence that Fort Sumter will be evacuated.”[62] On March 30, the commissioners received word from Governor Pickens that Lamon’s visit with him on March 25 was a commitment from the Lincoln administration that Sumter would be evacuated soon and that Lamon had represented himself to Governor Pickens to be the personal delegate of President Lincoln.[63]

An extremely important cabinet meeting occurred, however, on March 29, which produced a completely different result than the cabinet meeting which had occurred on March 15. One day before this meeting on the 29th, President Lincoln told Fox that his plan regarding Sumter would be put into effect.[64] At the cabinet meeting on March 29, all but two of the cabinet members voted to reinforce Fort Sumter. Secretary of State Seward continued to oppose reinforcement, as did cabinet member Caleb Smith, and both called for evacuation of the troops.[65] Immediately following this cabinet meeting, Lincoln issued an order to Fox to prepare the expedition to leave for Fort Sumter no later than April 6.[66] Furthermore, Lincoln issued secret executive orders for troops to be assembled and for the warships to be made ready.[67]

A major question arises as to what happened between March 15 and March 29 to change the cabinet’s position and why Lincoln would indicate to Fox on the day before the cabinet meeting of March 29 that the plan was to be put into effect. David Potter renders his opinion that at the cabinet meeting on March 29, it was decided that General Scott’s recommendation to evacuate Sumter was more a political decision to keep in the border states, rather than a military opinion.[68] There is little evidence of this and overwhelming evidence that other factors caused the change. There had been speculation for some time in the Northern press that the Morrill Tariff might create a problem for the North if the South adopted a low tariff position. A good example is the New-Haven Daily Register, which editorialized on February 11, 1861, that:

There never was a more ill-timed, injudicious and destructive measure proposed, (so far as northern interests are concerned) than the Morrill tariff bill, now pending before Congress. It proposes to greatly increase the duties on all imported goods, and in many articles to carry up the increase to the prohibitory point . . . so that while Congress is raising the duties for the Northern ports, the Southern Convention is doing away with all import duties for the Southern ports. . . . More than three fourths of the seafront of the Atlantic States—extending from the Chesapeake inclusive, to the furtherest boundary of Texas, would be beyond the reach of our Congress tariff. Their ports would invite the free trade of the world! And what would the high tariff be worth to us then, with only a one-fourth fragment of our former seacoast left?[69]

Tax historian Charles Adams analyzes this Northern realization of what the comparative tariffs of the North and South would do to their industries:

The war started, not because of the high Morrill Tariff, but just the opposite: it was the low southern tariff, which created a free trade zone. That tariff and its economic consequences for the North—disastrous consequences—were what aroused the anger of northern commercial interests and turned their apathy toward the seceding states into militant anger. It united the money interests in the North, and they were willing to back the president with the capital needed to carry on the war. Here is the scenario:

1. On March 11, 1861, the Confederate Constitution was adopted. It created what was essentially a free trade zone in the Confederacy, in contrast to the new high-tax, protective zone in the North.

2. Within less than two weeks, northern newspapers grasped the significance of this and switched from a moderate, conciliatory policy to a militant demand for immediate action.[70]

The New York Evening Post, a Republican newspaper, published an editorial on March 12 as follows:

There are some difficulties attending the collection of the revenue in the seceding states which it will be well to look at attentively.

That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad, it is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. . . . Allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railways would be supplied from the southern ports.

What, then, is left for our government? Shall we let the seceding states repeal the revenue laws for the whole Union in this manner? Or will the government choose to consider all foreign commerce destined for these ports where we have no custom-houses and no collectors, as contraband, and stop it, when offering to enter the collection districts from which our authorities have been expelled? Or will the president call a special session of Congress to do what the last unwisely failed to do—to abolish all ports of entry in the seceding states?[71]

The Philadelphia Press, on March 18, 1861, demanded a war by calling for a blockade of all Southern ports. The paper pointed out that the vast border from the Atlantic Ocean to West Texas would have no protective tariff and European goods would underprice Northern goods in Southern markets, and that this would ruin Northern business.[72] Previously, on January 15, 1861, the same paper had been against any military action, arguing that the South should be allowed to go peacefully, but this was before the Morrill Tariff passed with its call for a high protective tariff and the Southern Confederacy passed its Constitutional prohibition against protective tariffs.[73] The New York Times also changed its position over the tariff issue, and on March 22 and 23, stated, “At once shut up every Southern port, destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate states. . . . A state of war would almost be preferable to the passive action the government had been following.”[74]

The most explicit article on this issue which now faced the Lincoln administration appeared in the Boston Transcript for March 18, 1861:

It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the Union which they have abandoned. Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for separation of the cotton states; but the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby.

The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederate States that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interests of the country will suffer from the increased importation resulting from low duties. . . . The [government] would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.[75]

Lincoln was also getting pressure from the Radical Republicans, especially governors, that he needed to adopt a strong policy and go to war, if necessary, over Fort Sumter. Typical of the reaction of the Radical Republicans was a letter dated March 27, 1861, from J.H. Jordon to Secretary of Treasury Chase, which undoubtedly was discussed with the cabinet members along with many other letters and newspaper editorials on this subject. This letter read as follows:

In the name of God! why not hold the Fort? Will reinforcing & holding it cause the rebels to attack it, and thus bring on “civil war”? What of it? That is just what the government ought to wish to bring about, and ought to do all it can . . . to bring about. Let them attack the Fort, if they will—it will then be them that commence the war.[76]

It was also being widely reported in the press that the reason the Republicans were showing up poorly in elections in Ohio, Connecticut, and Rhode Island was that the administration was showing a weakness by abandoning Fort Sumter. Rutherford B. Hayes had declared, “Yes, giving up Fort Sumter is vexing. It hurts our little election, too.”[77]

Charles W. Ramsdell considered the evidence and argued that Lincoln was in a terrible bind by getting military advice that the reinforcement or bringing supplies would be a failure, but that politically he could not afford to evacuate the fort. Ramsdell states: “Could the Southerners be induced to attack Sumter, to assume the aggressive and thus put themselves in the wrong in the eyes of the North and of the world?”[78] He continues, that if the South could be induced to start the war, then:

The two wings of his party would unite, some at least of the Democrats would come to his support, even the border-state people might be held, if they could be convinced that the war was being forced by the secessionists. Unless he could unite them in defense of the authority of the government, the peaceable and the “stiff-backed” Republicans would split apart, the party would collapse, his administration would be a failure, and he would go down in history as a weak man who had allowed the Union to crumble in his hands. As things now stood, the only way by which the Union could be restored, his party and his administration saved, was by an unequivocal assertion of the authority of the government; that is, through war. But he must not openly assume the aggressive; that must be done by the secessionists.[79]

Lincoln, with over 60 percent of the vote against him and his party being one of many clashing ideas, knew that his minority party could fall apart under the crisis. Shelby Foote has described this dilemma and Lincoln’s strategy:

Walking the midnight corridors of the White House after the day-long din of office seekers and divided counsels, Lincoln knew that his first task was to unite all these discordant elements, and he knew, too, that the most effective way to do this was to await an act of aggression by the South, exerting in the interim just enough pressure to provoke such an action, without exerting enough to justify it.[80]

On April 1, there was a flurry of activity in the Lincoln administration. As already mentioned, Lincoln issued new executive orders for Fort Pickens to be reinforced as election results came in which were unfavorable to the Republicans, who lost an important election in Ohio.[81] Secretary of State Seward on this day also recommended in writing that Lincoln start a war with either France or Spain instead of the South. Seward pointed out that there had been recent Spanish and French aggressions in Mexico and Santo Domingo, and he recommended that Lincoln demand explanations from Spain and France, and if satisfactory explanations were not received, to declare war against them.[82] Seward had already received much criticism in January of 1861, when he stated that, “If the Lord would only give the United States an excuse for a war with England, France, or Spain, that would be the best means of reestablishing internal peace.”[83] Seward recognized the tremendous value to the Lincoln administration of having a war, since this would unite the Republican Party, cause great power to flow to the president, and end most dissent and opposition. Lincoln had also learned this when he tried to oppose President Polk in the Mexican War. However, Lincoln preferred a war with the South rather than England, Spain, or France. Lincoln answered Seward’s note of April 1 with a note of his own on the same day, turning down the advice on foreign policy. Seward, in his note, had also criticized Lincoln for having no domestic policy, and Lincoln responded to this charge in the same note by reminding Seward that in his first Inaugural Address, he set out his policy, which was to hold the forts and collect the taxes, and he said at the time this would be done by force or invasion, if necessary.[84]

Meanwhile, the Confederate commissioners were detecting much military activity and becoming very suspicious of what Lincoln was doing secretly. On April 1, Justice Campbell went to Secretary of State Seward and demanded confirmation that Fort Sumter was to be abandoned, but at this point, he heard a different story which he considered a change in position. Seward now informed him that the president might desire to supply Fort Sumter with food and provisions but not reinforce it with troops. However, Seward stated that Lincoln “will not undertake to do so without first giving notice to Governor Pickens.”[85] Now the Lincoln administration was taking a different position and making a distinction between providing food or supplies and reinforcing with troops by having the public believe that Major Anderson and his troops were “starving.” However, Anderson continued to get daily supplies from Charleston until the South realized for certain that the North was sending troops and ships to precipitate an attack on Fort Sumter, and his food supplies were not cut off until April 7. Seward however, continued to guarantee to Justice Campbell that the cabinet and the president had decided to evacuate Fort Sumter eventually.[86] Seward informed Justice Campbell that the delay by the administration regarding evacuation was being forced because certain Republicans had asked the president to wait for an outcome of the elections in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and the administration had made a commitment to wait on those results.[87] Finally, on April 8, Justice Campbell pushed Seward for a response, as there was much rumor of military activity going on, and Seward sent a note to Campbell which stated, “Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see.”[88] On April 2, Confederate Secretary of State L.P. Walker, upon learning from the commissioners that there was much military activity and a rumor that the Lincoln administration might try to reinforce Fort Sumter, told General Beauregard in Charleston that he should consider discontinuing food supplies to Major Anderson.[89]

On April 3, Lincoln and Seward decided to send a delegate, Allen B. McGruder, to the Virginia Secession Convention to try to get a commitment from Virginia that it would not secede. On February 13, the state of Virginia had initiated a convention to consider the question of its secession and what to do about the seven states which had already seceded. There was strong sentiment against secession in Virginia, but it was obvious there was a very dangerous situation existing, especially regarding Forts Pickens and Sumter, with armed troops having guns trained on each other. The Buchanan administration was a lame duck administration, and it was unknown at that time how President Lincoln would deal with the crisis. Virginia was the key Southern state: There were seven other border states that also had not seceded, and they looked to Virginia for leadership.

McGruder was sent on April 4 to invite representatives of the convention to come to Washington and discuss these matters directly with President Lincoln. The convention chose three commissioners, but they were told that this must be a very secret mission, and since these individuals were so well-known in Washington, it was decided to send Colonel John B. Baldwin, who was well-known in Virginia but not in Washington. He was also a person known to be opposed to secession.[90] Colonel Baldwin’s interview with Lincoln is related by Rev. R.L. Dabney, based on a personal interview with Baldwin in 1865, but Baldwin also testified under oath before the Joint Commission of Reconstruction in the same year with the same testimony.[91] Colonel Baldwin reported that he met Secretary of State Seward on April 4, and was taken to the White House and introduced to President Lincoln. Lincoln was meeting in a room with numerous individuals, but after being told by Seward that Colonel Baldwin was present, he excused himself and went upstairs with Baldwin, locked the door, and had a private conversation.

Baldwin reported to Lincoln that Virginia wanted to stay in the Union and that this would help keep the other border states from joining the seven states which had seceded. The Virginia Convention was not worried about the issue of slavery, but it was worried about Lincoln using force to bring back the seceding states. Therefore, it wanted a written proclamation of not more than five lines to state simply that the Lincoln administration would uphold the Constitution and federal laws. The convention wanted a firm commitment that Lincoln would not use force to bring the states back. Baldwin reported further, that if Lincoln would sign such a proclamation, Virginia would not secede and would use its best efforts to get all the seceded states back into the Union. Then, Baldwin reported, Lincoln stood up and seemed very frustrated and stalked around the room and said, “I ought to have known this sooner! You are too late, sir, too late! Why did you not come here four days ago, and tell me all this?”[92] Baldwin protested that he came as soon as he was invited to do so and he got here as soon as possible. Lincoln again replied: “Yes, but you are too late, I tell you, too late!”[93]

Baldwin then related that he came to the conclusion that a policy of compulsion had already been decided upon and it was too late to stop it. Baldwin stated that Lincoln seemed to be impressed with the sincerity with which he reported that Virginia wanted to stay in the Union and that the Virginians would use their best efforts to try to bring the seceded states back; however, Lincoln asked him, “But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?”[94] Baldwin replied, “Yes sir, until they can be peaceably brought back.”[95] Lincoln then replied, “And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?”[96]

Baldwin concluded sadly that there could be no agreement on the part of Lincoln about a commitment not to use force, so he returned to Virginia and reported his findings to the three commissioners and to the convention. The three Virginia commissioners then decided to go to Washington and meet with Lincoln. They spoke directly with Lincoln in the White House and again urged forbearance and evacuation of the forts. Lincoln objected that all goods would then be imported through Charleston and his source of revenue would be dried up. His statement was, “If I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!”[97]

Baldwin also told Reverend Dabney that, after the war, he had talked with a personal friend and apologist of Secretary of State Seward, and Baldwin inquired as to why Seward had misled Justice Campbell of the U.S. Supreme Court about Lincoln’s intentions concerning Fort Sumter, as well as misleading the Confederate commissioners. The friend of Seward stated that Lincoln was swayed from taking Seward’s and General Scott’s advice about Fort Sumter by “Thad. Stevens and the radical governors.”[98] Colonel Baldwin continued with the statement from Seward’s friend, who stated that there was “great wrath” shown by the radical governors and they spoke to Lincoln as follows:

Seward cries perpetually that we must not do this, and that, for fear war should result. Seward is shortsighted. War is precisely the thing we should desire. Our party interests have everything to lose by a peaceable settlement of this trouble, and everything to gain by collision. For a generation we have been “the outs”; now at last we are “the ins.” While in opposition, it was very well to prate of the Constitution, and of rights; but now we are the government, and mean to continue so; and our interest is to have a strong and centralized government. It is high time now that the government were revolutionized and consolidated, and these irksome “States’ rights” wiped out. We need a strong government to dispense much wealth and power to its adherents; we want permanently high tariffs, to make the South tributary to the North; and now these Southern fellows are giving us precisely the opportunity we want to do all this, and shall Seward sing his silly song of the necessity of avoiding war? War is the very thing we should hail! The Southern men are rash, and now profoundly irritated. Our plan should be, by some artifice, to provoke them to seem to strike the first blow. Then we shall have a pretext with which to unite the now divided North, and make them fly to arms. The Southerners are a braggart, but a cowardly and effeminate set of bullies; we shall easily whip them in three months. But this short war will be, if we are wise, our sufficient occasion. We will use it to destroy slavery, and thus permanently cripple the South. And that is the stronghold of all these ideas of “limited government” and “rights of the people.” Crush the South, by abolishing slavery, and we shall have all we want—a consolidated government, an indefinite party ascendancy, and ability to lay on such tariffs and taxes as we please, and aggrandize ourselves and our section![99]

On April 4, Martin J. Crawford, who was one of the Confederate commissioners, telegraphed Governor Pickens expressing his opinion that the president intended to shift the responsibility to Major Anderson by simply taking no action and leaving Anderson to make his own decisions. Governor Pickens had also, on the same day, received word from the Confederate government that the food supplies from Charleston to Major Anderson should be cut off. Therefore, Governor Pickens sent a messenger to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter telling him that the privilege of getting food supplies from Charleston would end soon, and he also relayed the information he had received from Mr. Crawford, in order to tell Anderson what was being said in Washington. The rumor reported to Major Anderson was that: “Mr. Lincoln would not order Major Anderson to withdraw from Fort Sumter, and would leave him to act for himself.”[100] The messenger reported back to Governor Pickens that Anderson became extremely upset with the report. Anderson’s written reply of April 5 is part of the official records and was sent to his superiors in Washington reporting the rumor and asking if it was true that he was to be abandoned without any orders. It appears clear from this that Major Anderson did not know that any reinforcements were being sent. In his report he states that his food supplies were soon to be cut off from Charleston.[101] As we know now, Lincoln had already issued the orders to reinforce Fort Sumter and was using the pretext that he was “sending bread to the starving garrison,” when in fact, it was not until April 7 that the South cut off Anderson’s food supply, and this was entirely the result of provocative acts of the president.[102] Also, Anderson had previously let it be known that even if his supplies were cut off from Charleston, he would still have enough food to last until April 26.

On April 7, the New York Herald published the substance of a message from Confederate President Jefferson Davis:

Dispatches received here to-day from Montgomery render it perfectly certain that no attack will be made by the Confederate troops on either Fort Sumter or Fort Pickens. President Davis is determined that this administration shall not place him in a false position, by making it appear to the world that the South is the aggressor. This has been and still is the policy of Mr. Lincoln. It will not be successful. Unless Mr. Lincoln’s administration makes the first demonstration and attack, President Davis says there will be no collision or bloodshed. With the Lincoln administration, therefore, rests the responsibility of precipitating a collision, and the fearful evils of protracted civil war.[103]

Furthermore, on April 7, Major Anderson received a letter composed by President Lincoln but signed by Secretary of War Cameron that was dated April 4, which informed Anderson that Lincoln was actually sending troops and ships to reinforce Fort Sumter. Anderson had warned Lincoln earlier that any successful reinforcement would have to be done by sending in thousands of troops from Fort Moultrie and that any reinforcement attempt from the sea would not be successful and would only cause the South to fire on the fort, and this would start a war.

On April 8, Anderson composed a letter to be sent back to President Lincoln; however, the South had not only cut off his food supply at this point but also confiscated all the mail delivery including this letter which read, in part, as follows:

I had the honor to receive by yesterday’s mail the letter of the honorable Secretary of War, dated April 4, and confess that what he there states surprises me very greatly, following as it does in contradicting so positively the assurance Mr. Crawford telegraphed he was authorized to make. I trust that this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.

We have not oil enough to keep a light in the lantern for one night. The boats will have, therefore, to rely at night entirely upon other marks. I ought to have been informed that this expedition was to come. Colonel Lamon’s remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be carried out. We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. That God will still avert it, and cause us to resort to pacific measures to maintain our rights, is my ardent prayer.[104]

By intercepting this letter, the South now knew that Lincoln was not just sending food supplies but was sending massive forces for the reinforcement of Fort Sumter in complete violation of all assurances previously made. They knew that great deception had been practiced by Lincoln in his representations to various agents of the Confederacy. President Davis now understood, not only from this letter, but also other sources, that Lincoln was sending a threatening army of reinforcements in the form of eight ships, with twenty-six cannons and fourteen hundred men, which would arrive in Charleston within a few days.[105] Also on April 8, a special messenger from President Lincoln, by the name of Robert L. Chew, a mere clerk in the State Department rather than an official, arrived in Charleston and went with Captain Theo Talbot to meet with Governor Pickens. Mr. Chew delivered a written message composed by Lincoln which stated:

I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that, if such an attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort.[106]

On April 10, the New York Tribune published an editorial which stated, “We are enabled to state, with positive certainty, that the principal object of the military and naval expedition which has sailed from this harbor, within the past four days, is the relief of Fort Sumter.”[107] As soon as the editorial appeared, the three Confederate commissioners in Washington telegraphed General Beauregard in Charleston that the “The Tribune of to-day declares the main object of the expedition to be the relief of Sumter, and that a force will be landed which will overcome all opposition.”[108]

Meanwhile, in Montgomery, Secretary of War Leroy Walker had received word from General Beauregard in Charleston that Governor Pickens had received an official notice through Robert Chew from President Lincoln, that the reinforcements were coming, and Walker sent a telegram back to Beauregard stating,

If you have no doubt of the authorized character of the agent who communicated to you the intention of the Washington Government to supply Fort Sumter by force you will at once demand its evacuation, and if this is refused proceed, in such manner as you may determine, to reduce it.[109]

The next day General Beauregard sent two representatives to deliver a message to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter and asked if he would immediately evacuate the fort, and if he agreed to do so, they would allow him to do so with honor and without harm. Anderson sent back a reply in writing that he refused to leave, but he stated orally to the messengers “I will await the first shot, and if you do not batter us to pieces, we will be starved out in a few days.”[110] General Beauregard and the South’s military leaders all knew that Lincoln’s ships and armed forces would arrive no later than April 12, and probably sooner. Therefore, they reasoned that they were left with no alternative but to tell Major Anderson they could not wait any longer, and if he did not evacuate now, they would begin firing on April 12.

Bruce Catton, a prominent Civil War historian, explains how Lincoln maneuvered Davis into firing the first shot:

Lincoln had been plainly warned by Lamon and by Hurlbut that a ship taking provisions to Fort Sumter would be fired on. Now he was sending the ship, with advance notice to the men who had the guns. He was sending war ships and soldiers as well, but they would remain in the background; if there was going to be a war it would begin over a boat load of salt pork and crackers—over that, and the infinite overtones which by now were involved. Not for nothing did Captain Fox remark afterward that it seemed very important to Lincoln that South Carolina “should stand before the civilized world as having fired upon bread.”[111]

One biographer of Jefferson Davis, Robert McElroy, described the thinking of Davis and his cabinet in sending the order to fire on Sumter: “The order [by Lincoln] for the sending of the fleet was a declaration of war.”[112] Shelby Foote describes the dilemma as follows:

Lincoln had maneuvered them into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war. What was worse, in the eyes of the world, that first shot would be fired for the immediate purpose of keeping food from hungry men.

Davis assembled his cabinet and laid the message before them. Their reactions were varied. Robert Toombs, the fire-eater, was disturbed and said so: “The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen, and I do not feel competent to advise you.” He paced the room, head lowered, hands clasped beneath his coattails. “Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and you will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornets’ nest which extends from mountains to ocean. Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.”

Davis reasoned otherwise, and made his decision accordingly. It was not he who had forced the issue, but Lincoln, and this the world would see and know, along with the deception which had been practiced.[113]

The logic of Davis was reasonable in light of all he knew about the negotiations over Pickens and Sumter. He knew Lincoln had decided not to abandon the forts and was prepared to send in reinforcements. It would not be reasonable to wait until the forts had been resupplied and reinforced with men and ammunition before firing on them. Davis could not have a federal fort left in Charleston harbor after secession any more than the American colonists could have allowed the British to continue having a fort in the New York or Boston harbors after secession from England. It was clear that Lincoln had deceived the South in his various promises, especially through Seward, to evacuate the forts. Now he was clearly provoking a war by resupplying Fort Sumter and showing thereby that it would not be evacuated. However, the public did not have the benefit of all the information concerning negotiations over the forts and did not understand all the correspondence that had gone back and forth to indicate clearly that the sending of the ships for reinforcement, or sending them bread, was to be considered an act of war by the South. The public simply saw what appeared to be an innocent act of “sending bread to the starving garrison,” and the South opened fire. If the South had won the war, Davis’s viewpoint would have been in the history books along with the reasons the North would not allow the South to secede. But nothing is more certain in history than the fact that the winners write it.

When the South commenced firing, in the early morning hours of April 12, the first Lincoln ship, The Harriet Lane, had arrived near the Charleston harbor. The South continued to fire upon the fort for thirty-six hours and during this time the remainder of the ships arrived. However, the ships never returned any fire, indicating their mission had been accomplished simply by drawing the first shot from the South.

Many newspapers in the North reacted to the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s deception in provoking the South to fire the first shot. Representative of these reports in the North is an editorial in the Buffalo Daily Courier, dated April 16, 1861.

The news of the fall of Fort Sumter has been received at the North more with astonishment than any other feeling. Every mind is full of questions. Has the administration been in earnest in this first strangely disastrous battle? If the fort was to be reinforced, why was not the attempt made? . . . The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy. . . . If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces, had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration is accomplished.[114]

The New York Evening Day-Book, in its editorial dated April 17, stated as follows:

We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South. Lincoln and Seward know very well that the right to send a vessel with provisions to Major Anderson involved just the same issue as a reinforcement. Hence it was made in a way that enabled them to get up a story about “humanity,” “relieving a starving garrison.” It would be impossible for Seward to do anything openly and above board.

We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives at Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding.

Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it.[115]

The Providence Daily Post, on April 13, 1861 editorialized as follows:

We are to have civil war, if at all, because Abraham Lincoln loves a [the Republican] party better than he loves his country. . . . [He] clings to his party creed, and allows the nation to drift into the whirlpool of destruction. While commerce is languishing, and all our industrial interests are threatened with ruin, he calls upon the people of the North—Democrats, Conservatives, and Republicans—to march to the South, and vindicate—what? The national honor? By no means; but the Chicago platform! . . . The cotton States, despairing of justice under such circumstances, have withdrawn from the Union, asking only to be let alone.

We are told, however, just now, that war results, if at all, from an act of humanity on the part of our government—that the garrison at Fort Sumter needs food, and the effort is to supply them. That is all. Is it all? Look at the facts. For three weeks the administration newspapers have been assuring us that Fort Sumter would be abandoned. They said it could not be provisioned or reinforced without a great sacrifice of life, and without greatly exasperating the whole South; that to abandon it would certainly disappoint and embarrass the secessionist, and kill the spirit of secession in all the border slave States. They had got the public mind all ready for the event, when—presto!—the tables are turned, and Fort Sumter is to be provisioned! Secession is not to be killed! Why?

We think the reader will perceive why. Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor. There are men in Fort Sumter, he said, who are nearly out of provisions. They ought to be fed. We will attempt to feed them. Certainly nobody can blame us for that. We ought to feed our gallant soldiers by all means. We will attempt to feed them. The secessionists, who are both mad and foolish, will resist us. Then will commence civil war. Then I will appeal to the North to aid me in putting down rebellion, and the North must respond. How can it do otherwise?[116]

Finally, another representative editorial from the Northern press comes from New Jersey and the Jersey City American Standard. This was published on the day of the firing on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861:

There is a madness and a ruthlessness in the course which is attributed to the government which is astounding. It would seem as if it were bent upon the destruction instead of the preservation of the Union, and as if all wisdom and patriotism had departed from it, or had been forced to succumb to the demands of its infuriated partisan leaders. . . . [T]he government seeks to mask this, its real purpose, by pretending that humanity requires them to succor the gallant Major Anderson and his troops, and that an unarmed vessel is to be sent to him with stores and that if it is not permitted peaceably to fulfill its errand it shall be done by force. The measure is a disingenuous feint. . . . This unarmed vessel, it is well understood, is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the government is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war. It dare not itself fire the first shot or draw the first blood, and is now seeking by a mean artifice to transfer the odium of doing so to the Southern Confederacy. . . . The assumption of a regard for humanity and the actions which the government base upon it are a sham the most transparent, a mockery the most unsubstantial, an hypocrisy which is only more infamous than the low cunning with which it is commingled.

No intelligent man will be deceived by the plea, and if blood be shed it will be laid where it justly ought to be laid, at the door of an Administration which had not the courage to surrender an abstraction in order to preserve the peace and unity of the country, but was brave enough to dare to close its ear against all the persuasive ties of common brotherhood, a common country, a common ancestry, a common religion and a common language, and by plunging the nation into civil war to demolish the noble fabric which our fathers founded.

If this result follows—and follow civil war it must—the memory of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and his infatuated advisors will only be preserved with that of other destroyers to be scorned and execrated. . . . And if the historian who preserves the record of his fatal administration needs any motto descriptive of the president who destroyed the institutions which he swore to protect, it will probably be some such an one as this:

Here is the record of one who feared more to have it said that he deserted his party than that he ruined his country, who had a greater solicitude for his consistency as a partisan than for his wisdom as a Statesman or his courage and virtue as a patriot, and who destroyed by his weakness the fairest experiment of man in self government that the world ever witnessed.[117]

There were no casualties on either side as a result of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and after the firing ended, the South sent a doctor to see if Anderson needed his services. Major Anderson replied that there were no injuries or casualties and he needed no assistance, but he did request, and was then allowed, to have a ceremony to lower the flag and to leave with honor. However, during this ceremony, one of his cannons exploded and a Northern soldier was killed, which was the only casualty involved in the Fort Sumter incident.

Shelby Foote records the respect which both sides demonstrated toward each other, and especially the Southerners who admired the bravery of Major Anderson and his troops for enduring the assault. Foote states, “As the weary artillerymen passed silently out of the harbor, Confederate soldiers lining the beaches removed their caps in salute. There was no cheering.”[118] The matter could have ended here with only one accidental death. The South would have seceded and preserved the ideas of a limited central government and states’ rights advocated by the Founding Fathers. Slavery would have died a natural death soon, without a war, as it did everywhere else in Western civilization. Instead, President Lincoln, without consulting Congress, called for seventy-five thousand militia and unconstitutionally invaded the South as a “retaliation” for the firing on Fort Sumter. Also, on April 15, Lincoln called for Congress to meet, but not until July 4, 1861. Without any threat to the government in Washington or to the North, Lincoln began the war through illegal and unconstitutional means, claiming he was acting under the “war powers” of the president set out in the Constitution.

Since Congress never declared war, the question has arisen as to when the Civil War started. The U.S. Supreme Court was called on to decide this question in several cases which arose both during and immediately after the war. The popular opinion has been that the war officially started when the South fired on Fort Sumter; however, the Supreme Court stated that the war had two starting dates subsequent to the Fort Sumter incident, both initiated by President Lincoln in calling for a blockade of Southern ports. The first Presidential Proclamation was issued on April 19, 1861, applying to South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas; the second, issued on April 27, 1861, applied to Virginia and North Carolina.[119]

After the Fort Sumter incident, Justice Campbell of the U.S. Supreme Court realized that he had been badly misled by Secretary of State Seward during their negotiations, and he wrote to Seward criticizing him for this deception:

I think no candid man who will read what I have written and consider for a moment what is going on at Sumter but will agree that the equivocating conduct of the Administration, as measured and interpreted in connection with these promises, is the proximate cause of the great calamity.[120]

Secretary of State Seward never responded to this letter; however, his biographer, Thornton K. Lothrop, revealed Seward’s opinion about Sumter: “The Sumter expedition failed of its ostensible object, but it brought about the Southern attack on that fort. The first gun fired there effectively cleared the air . . . and placed Lincoln at the head of the united people.”[121]

Charles Ramsdell, a prominent historian, argues convincingly that Lincoln’s whole purpose in using the Fox plan was to prompt the South into firing the first shot:

Although there were no casualties during the bombardment, the mere news that the attack on the fort had begun swept the entire North into a roaring flame of anger. The “rebels” had fired the first shot; they had chosen to begin war. If there had been any doubt earlier whether the mass of the Northern people would support the administration in suppressing the secessionists, there was none now. Lincoln’s strategy had been completely successful. He seized at once the psychological moment for calling out the militia and committing the North to support of the war. This action cost him four of the border slave states, but he had probably already discounted that loss.[122]

Lincoln never ceased to blame the South for causing the war, and even in his State of the Union Address on December 6, 1864, Lincoln stated, “In stating a simple condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.”[123]

After the war, Confederate President Jefferson Davis explained his reasons for giving the order to fire on Fort Sumter:

The attempt to represent us as the aggressors in the conflict which ensued is as unfounded as the complaint made by the wolf against the lamb in the familiar fable. He who makes the assault is not necessarily he that strikes the first blow or fires the first gun. To have awaited further strengthening of their position by land and naval forces, with hostile purpose now declared, for the sake of having them “fire the first gun,” would have been as unwise as it would be to hesitate to strike down the arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at one’s breast, until he has actually fired. The disingenuous rant of demagogues about “firing on the flag” might serve to rouse the passions of insensate mobs in times of general excitement, but will be impotent in impartial history to relieve the Federal Government from the responsibility of the assault made by sending a hostile fleet against the harbor of Charleston, to cooperate with the menacing garrison of Fort Sumter. After the assault was made by the hostile descent of the fleet, the reduction of Fort Sumter was a measure of defense rendered absolutely and immediately necessary.

Such clearly was the idea of the commander of the Pawnee, when he declined, as Captain Fox informs us, without orders from a superior, to make any effort to enter the harbor, “there to inaugurate civil war.” The straightforward simplicity of the sailor had not been perverted by the shams of political sophistry.

But, suppose the Confederate authorities had been disposed to yield, and to consent to the introduction of supplies for the maintenance of the garrison, what assurance would they have had that nothing further would be attempted? What reliance could be placed in any assurances of the Government of the United States after the experience of the attempted ruse of the Star of the West and the deceptions practiced upon the Confederate Commissioners in Washington? He says we were “expressly notified” that nothing more “would on that occasion be attempted”—the words in italics themselves constituting a very significant though unobtrusive and innocent-looking limitation. But we have been just as expressly notified, long before, that the garrison would be withdrawn. It would be as easy to violate the one pledge as it had been to break the other.

Moreover, the so-called notification was a mere memorandum, without date, signature, or authentication of any kind, sent to Governor Pickens, not by an accredited agent, but by a subordinate employee of the State Department. Like the oral and written pledges of Mr. Seward, given through Judge Campbell, it seemed to be carefully and purposely divested of every attribute that could make it binding and valid, in case its authors should see fit to repudiate it.[124]

President Davis went on to say:

The bloodless bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter occurred on April 13, 1861. The garrison was generously permitted to retire with the honors of war. The evacuation of that fort, commanding the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, which, if in hostile hands, was destructive of its commerce, had been claimed as the right of South Carolina. The voluntary withdrawal of the garrison by the United States Government had been considered, and those best qualified to judge believed it had been promised. Yet, when instead of the fulfillment of just expectations, instead of the withdrawal of the garrison, a hostile expedition was organized and sent forward, the urgency of the case required its reduction before it should be reinforced. Had there been delay, the more serious conflict between larger forces, land and naval, would scarcely have been bloodless, as the bombardment fortunately was. The event, however, was seized upon to inflame the mind of the Northern people, and the disguise which had been worn in the communications with the Confederate Commissioners was now thrown off, and it was cunningly attempted to show that the South, which had been pleading for peace and still stood on the defensive, had by this bombardment inaugurated a war against the United States.[125]

Following the maneuver of getting the South to fire the first shot and “start the war,” Lincoln then set out to become America’s first dictator. One of his strongest supporters, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., describes Lincoln’s initial conduct of the war as follows:

Lincoln chose nevertheless to begin by assuming power to act independently of Congress. Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861. On April 15, Lincoln summoned Congress to meet in special session—but not until July 4. He thereby gained ten weeks to bypass Congress, ruled by decree, and set the nation irrevocably on the path to war.

On April 15, he called out state militia to the number of seventy-five thousand. Here he was acting on the basis of a statute. From then on he acted on his own. On April 19, he imposed a blockade on rebel ports, thereby assuming authority to take actions hitherto considered as requiring a declaration of war. On May 3, he called for volunteers and enlarged the army and navy, thereby usurping the power confided to Congress to raise armies and maintain navies. On April 20, he ordered the Secretary of Treasury to spend public money for defense without congressional appropriation, thereby violating Article I, section 9, of the Constitution. On April 27, he authorized the commanding general of the army to suspend the writ of habeas corpus—this despite the fact that the power of suspension, while not assigned explicitly to Congress, lay in that article of the Constitution devoted to the powers of Congress and was regarded by commentators before Lincoln as a congressional prerogative. Later he claimed the habeas corpus clause as a precedent for wider suspension of constitutional rights in time of rebellion or invasion—an undoubted stretching of original intent.[126]

The question that history must eventually determine is whether Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot in order that the public would believe, and history would record, that the South started the war which Lincoln actually started and wanted? While Lincoln was a very manipulative and secretive person, there is hard evidence which clearly indicts him of this offense. Not only do the official records, revealed particularly by the study of John Shipley Tilley, indicate this, but Lincoln himself leaves the evidence.[127] First, there is his letter to Gustavus Fox dated May 1, 1865, in which he consoled Fox and told him he should not be worried about the fact that his attempt to bring supplies to Fort Sumter was unsuccessful. Lincoln assured him that he still had confidence in him and praised him for the effort. Lincoln states in his letter,

You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.[128]

Lincoln also demonstrated his appreciation to Fox by elevating him to a high position of assistant secretary of the Navy in 1865.[129] Second, Lincoln’s two trusted confidential secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, recorded their accounts of Lincoln’s efforts to get the South to fire the first shot. One of their references states, “Abstractly it was enough that the Government was in the right. But to make the issue sure, he determined that in addition the rebellion should be put in ‘the wrong.’”[130] Also, they state,

President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to “send bread to Anderson”; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun the civil war.[131]

Finally, these two secretaries concluded the Fort Sumter matter by stating,

When he finally gave the order that the fleet should sail, he was master of the situation . . . master if the rebels hesitated or repented, because they would thereby forfeit their prestige with the South; master if they persisted, for he would then command a united North.[132]

The best evidence, however, is contained in the diary of Lincoln’s close and trusted friend, Senator Orville H. Browning. Senator Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois died after the war started, and on June 3, 1861, the Republican Governor, Richard Yates, appointed Browning to fill the vacancy. Browning had been a close personal friend of Lincoln for more than twenty years, and after becoming a senator he became a principal spokesman for the Lincoln administration. Lincoln had called Congress into session for July 4, 1861, but Senator Browning reported early and went to the White House to meet privately with his old friend on the night of July 3. Unknown to Lincoln, Browning kept a meticulous diary and he made an entry that night after returning to his hotel room about the discussion he just had with the president. The diary reports that after Lincoln read to Browning the message he was going to give Congress on July 4, he then put the document aside and Browning reports the conversation as follows:

He told me that the very first thing placed in his hands after his inauguration was a letter from Major Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter. That he called the cabinet together and consulted General Scott—that Scott concurred with Anderson, and the cabinet, with the exception of PM General Blair were for evacuating the Fort, and all the troubles and anxieties of his life had not equalled those which intervened between this time and the fall of Sumter. He himself conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce giving notice of the fact to Governor Pickens of S.C. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter—it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could.[133]

If “the plan” was “to bring food to the starving garrison” then it failed. But if “the plan” was to provoke the South into firing the first shot, then it succeeded, and this is exactly what Lincoln stated.

Charles Ramsdell states that this diary entry “completes the evidence” that Lincoln provoked the South into firing the first shot, and Ramsdell explains Lincoln’s conduct with Browning as follows:

It is not difficult to understand how the usually secretive Lincoln, so long surrounded by strangers and criticized by many whom he had expected to be helpful, talking that night for the first time in many months to an old, loyal, and discreet friend, though a friend who had often been somewhat patronizing, for once forgot to be reticent. It must have been an emotional relief to him, with his pride over his consummate strategy bottled up within him for so long, to be able to impress his friend Browning with his success in meeting a perplexing and dangerous situation. He did not suspect that Browning would set it down in a diary.[134]

Rarely do historians find any better clue or “smoking gun” about a clever politician’s hidden purpose than Browning’s diary entry. On the next day, July 4, 1861, Lincoln gave his message to Congress and informed them that he had been trying to bring about a peaceful solution to the problem when he sent his ships merely to “deliver bread to a few brave and hungry men at Fort Sumter.” He ended his message with these words, “And having thus chosen our course without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.”[135] Although Browning was a close friend and supporter of Lincoln, he must have blanched when he heard these words after having heard Lincoln’s true story the night before.

There are many Lincoln supporters who maintain that Lincoln could never have used a trick to start a war because this would be out of character for a man who had expressed his antiwar opinions so strongly during his one term in Congress when he opposed President Polk’s Mexican war. Lincoln charged Polk with provoking that war by ordering troops into a disputed boundary which caused the Mexicans to fire the first shots. One of Lincoln’s most admiring historians has commented upon Lincoln’s opposition to that war with the following comment:

Politics of course also intertwined with Lincoln’s moral revulsion to the Mexican War, as opposition to it became largely a party matter. Yet it is difficult to miss the fundamental antiwar meaning of his 1848 stand. He denounced the president of the United States, James K. Polk, for provoking the conflict: “The blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.” Lincoln made no apologies for attacking the commander in chief, for throughout history rulers [Lincoln said] “had always been . . . impoverishing their people in wars, pretending . . . that the good of the people was the object.” This, he argued, was “the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions.” “Military glory,” Lincoln defined as “that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.”[136]

Gabor Boritt is obviously quoting, in part, from Lincoln’s letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon, who had taken the position that Lincoln should not be criticizing President Polk for starting the war with Mexico and by tricking Congress into declaring war. Lincoln thought the war was unconstitutional because, in fact, President Polk had started it rather than submitting the question to Congress for a declaration of war. Lincoln’s letter to Herndon stated that:

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.[137]

However, Lincoln learned many valuable lessons during his opposition to President Polk. He knew that Polk wanted the war in order to take property away from the Mexicans which they had refused to sell. He also knew that Polk could not afford to be perceived as the aggressor in starting the war. Lincoln learned from Polk that if you provoke the other side into firing the first shot and the American troops are thereby under fire, it is very difficult for Congress not to support the president and, therefore, to declare war, since to do otherwise would be a failure to support the troops in the field. He also learned that immense power and prestige immediately flowed to Polk as soon as the war began. Lincoln learned that once war is underway, all dissent from your opponents is stamped out, and the party in power is assisted greatly in getting its way with Congress. Lincoln also had endured much criticism for his attack on President Polk, and he had learned how unpopular it is to oppose a war in progress. The Democrats especially condemned him in 1848 for, “corruption” and “treason” of this new “Benedict Arnold.”[138] Although most Whigs in Illinois agreed with Lincoln’s opposition to Polk and accused the president of starting the war, one politician, who had been an opponent of the War of 1812, did not, and he explained that he would not oppose the Mexican war thusly: “No, by God, I opposed one war, and it ruined me, and henceforth, I am for War, Pestilence, and Famine.”[139]

Lincoln’s Mexican war experience, far from proving that he would have been acting out of character by causing the Civil War, shows that he had an opportunity to learn many lessons which he could put into practice as president, especially for one who had less than 40 percent of the vote and minority representation in both Houses of Congress. With a war in progress, and the South not represented in Congress, the entire Republican agenda could be put into law. The South had always opposed the plan of the Federalist Party for a strong centralized government; the South had further opposed the Whigs, and now the South opposed Republicans, who stood for the same strong centralized government and also wanted a high protective tariff, internal improvements, as well as a partnership between big business and government.

Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of the influential magazine Foreign Affairs, is a great admirer of Lincoln’s accomplishment in creating a strong centralized government, which changed America from a “backward” country to one that resembled the European powers. In his book, From Wealth to Power, he supports the fact that Lincoln was the first man to make America into a great war power, and he fully agrees with the change in foreign policy which finally occurred with the Spanish-American War and World War I. He concludes that a rich country like the U.S. should also be a “powerful country” through its military might, which helps it to expand its economic empire abroad. Zakaria describes the change of perception by European statesmen and especially Great Britain’s Prime Minister Disraeli as a result of Lincoln’s Civil War:

European statesmen believed the Civil War represented a watershed from which there could be no turning back. Benjamin Disraeli explained in the House of Commons that the war would produce “a different America from that which was known to our fathers and even from that which this generation has had so much experience. It would be an America of armies, of diplomacy, of Rival States and maneuvering Cabinets, of frequent turbulence, and probably of frequent wars.”[140]

Very different ideas are contained in the correspondence after the Civil War between two prominent men, who both loved liberty and saw that a strong centralized government was a great threat to individual freedom and the whole concept of the American Republic created by our Founders. The great historian of liberty Lord Acton, had been asked to write his opinions on the American Civil War, which he had followed very closely and had written about contemporaneously with the events. At the end of the war, he wrote to General Robert E. Lee, asking for Lee’s opinions about the effect of the North’s victory. In a letter dated November 4, 1866, Lord Acton lamented the defeat of the South and stated:

I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. . . . Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.[141]

General Lee replied to Lord Acton in a letter dated December 15, 1866, and, in part, stated:

I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.[142]

General Lee continued by stating:

The South has contended only for the supremacy of the constitution, and the just administration of the laws made in pursuance to it. Virginia to the last made great efforts to save the union, and urged harmony and compromise. Senator Douglass, in his remarks upon the compromise bill recommended by the committee of thirteen in 1861, stated that every member from the South, including Messrs. Toombs and Davis, expressed their willingness to accept the proposition of Senator Crittenden from Kentucky, as a final settlement of the controversy, if sustained by the republican party, and that the only difficulty in the way of an amicable adjustment was with the republican party. Who then is responsible for the war?[143]

Carl N. Degler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, states that most historians do not like to compare Lincoln with Bismarck of Germany, but he shows that they were both men of “blood and iron” and their achievements were very similar.[144] Both Lincoln and Bismarck converted their respective governments, which were both confederations of states, into consolidated nations. Degler concludes that both needed wars to accomplish this feat. Although Degler doesn’t mention the welfare-state comparisons, Bismarck was very explicit in creating the first modern welfare state through the first social security system and the first workmen’s compensation act, while Lincoln’s creation of the welfare state in America was mainly corporate welfare, and then after the war there were pensions for the veterans. Degler points out, however, that there is a very direct parallel in their respective creations of the warfare state.

One comparison leading to the warfare state which Degler omits is that in the process of destroying confederacies to create nations, both Bismarck and Lincoln became virtual dictators essentially during the same period of time. Bismarck gained this distinction from 1862 to 1871 and Lincoln from 1861 to 1865.[145] Professor Forrest McDonald, in his excellent book surveying the American presidency, cites numerous sources, both by Lincoln’s contemporaries and by current historians who all agree that Lincoln became a dictator:

Many people, then and later, criticized Lincoln’s conduct as excessive. The abolitionist Wendell Phillips called Lincoln an “unlimited despot,” and Justice Benjamin R. Curtis wrote that he had established “a military despotism.” When William Whiting, solicitor of the War Department, published a book called War Powers under the Constitution, in which he maintained that in wartime the president’s actions are subject to no constitutional restraints whatever, Sen. Charles Sumner thundered that that doctrine (and Lincoln’s behavior under it) was “a pretension so irrational and unconstitutional, so absurd and tyrannical” as to deserve no respect. The doctrine when followed changed the federal authority “from a government of law to that of a military dictator.” Twentieth-century historians and political scientists routinely characterized Lincoln’s presidency as a “dictatorship” or as a “constitutional dictatorship”—sometimes using the word in the benign Roman sense, sometimes in a sinister modern sense.”[146]

Lincoln, as America’s first dictator, brought some of the horrors of the French Revolution to our shores. He signed a warrant for the arrest of the chief justice of the Supreme Court because the judge rendered an opinion that Lincoln acted unconstitutionally by suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln persecuted Northern objectors to the war by having more than thirteen thousand people arrested without warrants, tried, and convicted in military courts unfairly and without due process of law, even though the civil courts were fully available for the trials.[147] After the war, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Ex Parte Milligan (1866) rendered one of its greatest decisions against presidential war power and in favor of individual rights by deciding that President Lincoln acted unconstitutionally by permitting the military trial of these civilians.

The government urged in the Milligan case that in the absence of restrictions imposed by Congress, the president is “sole judge of the exigencies, necessities, and duties of the occasion, their extent and duration,” and that “during the war, his powers must be without limit.” The Court unanimously disagreed, proclaiming,

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace. . . . No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.[148]

Lincoln had numerous members of the state legislature of Maryland arrested and placed in prison merely on the suspicion that they might vote for secession.[149] He also confiscated many railroads and more than three hundred “disloyal” newspapers. The supreme irony occurred when Lincoln had the grandson of the author of the Star-Spangled Banner arrested without a warrant and held in prison without any charges, merely on suspicion of disloyalty to Lincoln. This occurred at Fort McHenry, the very scene that had inspired the writing of the national anthem. Frank Key Howard wrote about this horrible experience in a book which was first published in 1881:

When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day, forty-seven years before, my grandfather, Mr. F.S. Key, then a prisoner on a British ship, had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When, on the following morning, the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the “Star-spangled Banner.” As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving, at the same place, over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed.[150]

Secretary of State Seward basked in the power and the glory of the Lincoln dictatorship, even to the extent that he bragged to Lord Lyons, the British ambassador, “I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the bell again and order the arrest of a citizen of New York. Can Queen Victoria do as much?”[151]

Degler points out that both Lincoln and Bismarck lived in a time when the trends were very different from today. While the approval of secession has been evident and was a very live issue during the last years of the twentieth century in Russia, Canada, Italy, France, Belgium, Britain, and even in the United States, Degler points out that between 1845 and 1870, there was much nation-building going on in the world. He gives six examples where there was either a failed secession or wars which brought about unification: (1) There was the revolt of Hungary against Austria which failed in 1848; (2) The Poles failed in a secession movement against Russia in 1863; (3) In 1847, the Swiss completed a Union under a new constitution modeled after that of America as a result of a civil war between the Catholic and Protestant cantons, which had caused a separation; (4) In 1860, Italy became united for the first time since Ancient Rome; (5) In 1870, Germany became united for the first time; and (6) Japan reorganized into a strong centralized government to replace the feudal society in the course of the Meiji Restoration.[152] Degler then analyzes the American Civil War, which he states is the best example of the unification process that was taking place at the time. He points out that under the original American Constitution there was a confederation of states, and America was not a nation in the “usual” or European sense. There had been many prior threats of disunion through the Kentucky-Virginia resolutions of nullification, the threat of New England states to secede after the Louisiana Purchase, the threat of New England states to secede after the War of 1812, and the South Carolina tariff nullification threat in 1832.[153]

Degler analyzes Bismarck’s process of unification and states that he had to provoke two wars to create the German nation. Degler states that “all of the struggles for national unification in Europe, as in the United States, required military power to bring the nation into existence and to arm it with state power.”[154] The German unification of its various states under Bismarck was not complete until the end of both wars. First, the Seven Weeks War was provoked by Bismarck on behalf of Prussia against Austria for the purpose of excluding Austria from Germany so that the militaristic state of Prussia would be the center and head of a future united Germany. By defeating Austria in 1866, he created a North German Confederation under the leadership of Prussia. Degler states: “Bismarck had provoked Austria into war to achieve his end.”[155] The second step in the unification process was the Franco-Prussian War, which brought into the newly formed German nation the Catholic states of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden with Protestant Prussia, and the other Northern states.[156] Bismarck boasted in his memoirs that he provoked the war with France by deliberately editing a report from the Prussian King, who was making a response to the French government. This has become known as the “Ems dispatch,” and upon receipt of the reply, which greatly angered the French government, they declared war against Germany. Bismarck accomplished his purpose by committing the first act of aggression which provoked the French into declaring war, thus uniting all the German states into one nation under the leadership of Prussia and Bismarck himself.[157] He was in tune with Lincoln regarding the appearance of a defensive war in order to make it appear to be a “just war.” Bismarck stated, “Success essentially depends upon the impression which the origination of the war makes upon us and others; it is important that we should be the party attacked.”[158]

The foreign policy viewpoint of Great Britain, as seen through the eyes of its prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, regarding the effect of the American Civil War has already been stated. It is interesting to compare here Disraeli’s ideas about the newly unified Germany:

As far as Germany was concerned, Disraeli’s well-known remark in February, 1871 on “the German revolution” captured some of Europe’s apprehensive reaction to the newly unified Germany. That revolution, Disraeli dramatically asserted, is “a greater political event than the French Revolution of the last century.” He admitted that it was not as great a social event as the French upheaval, but “there is not a diplomatic tradition which has not been swept away. You have a new world. . . . The balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers most, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England.”[159]

The editors of the book On the Road to Total War, from which the above quotation was taken, reached the following conclusion:

After all, in the making of nations, as Sherman advised, one must be prepared to use violence, even to the extreme of total war, if necessary. Abraham Lincoln, the lowly born democrat, and Otto von Bismarck, the aristocratic autocrat, could have agreed on that.[160]

Carl Degler, in commenting upon the American Civil War, stated that it “in short, was not a struggle to save a failed Union, but to create a nation that until then had not come into being.”[161] Degler continues, “Lincoln then emerges as the true creator of American nationalism, rather than as the mere savior of the Union.”[162] Degler’s conclusion about the significance of the war is that:

What the war represented, in the end, was the forceful incorporation of a recalcitrant South into a newly created nation. Indeed, that was exactly what abolitionist Wendell Phillips had feared at the outset. “A Union,” he remarked in a public address in New York in 1860, “is made up of willing states.”[163]

Degler also addresses the question of Lincoln’s maneuvering the South into firing the first shot as follows:

Over the years, the dispute among United States historians whether Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot of the Civil War, has not reached the negative interpretation that clings to Bismarck’s Ems dispatch. Yet Lincoln’s delay in settling the issue of Sumter undoubtedly exerted great pressure upon the Confederates to fire first. To that extent his actions display some of the earmarks of Bismarck’s maneuvering in 1870. For at the same time Lincoln was holding off from supplying Sumter he was firmly rejecting the advice of his chief military advisor, Winfield Scott, that surrendering the fort was better than provoking the Confederates into beginning a war. Lincoln’s nationalism needed a war, but one that the other side would begin.[164]

In summary, Lincoln brought about the “American System” envisioned by his hero Henry Clay, which included extremely high tariffs to protect Northern industry from foreign competition, internal improvements for Northern business from tax revenues collected primarily in the South, and a centralized federal government strong enough to be “aggressive abroad and despotic at home” as stated by Lee.[165] None of this could have been achieved without destroying the American Republic created by the Founding Fathers, and this could not have been done without a war that excluded the South from Congress and then left this region prostrate from 1865 until the middle of the twentieth century—a century which saw Lincoln’s nation involved in two world wars with the German nation, which Bismarck had created.

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[1] Robert Murray and Tim H. Blessing, “The Presidential Performance Study: A Progress Report,” Journal of American History 70 (December 1983): 535.

[2] Ibid., p. 553.

[3] Richard N. Current, Lincoln and The First Shot (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1963), p. 7.

[4] W.A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter (New York: Charles Scribener’s Sons, 1957), p. 155.

[5] See David Gordon, ed., Secession, State and Liberty, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), which covers the subject of secession in America thoroughly and shows that both the North and the South had championed this “right” and both had threatened to secede on numerous occasions before the Civil War.

[6] Gaillard Hunt and James Brown Scott, eds., The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Which Framed the Constitution of the United States of America (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987), vol. 2, p. 485. Also see p. 575 for Mason’s statement about the two-thirds vote and p. 582 for his refusal to sign the Constitution along with Randolph and Gerry.

[7] Ibid., p. 485.

[8] See K.R. Constantine Gutzman, “‘Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave . . .’: James Madison and the Compound Republic,” Continuity: A Journal of History 22 (1998): 24.

In our own day, with the NAFTA and GATT controversies, we have been reminded of the potentially contentious nature of trade arguments. In Madison’s day, such disputes were even more contentious, even more acrimonious. Especially after Henry Clay’s “American System” speech of 1824, in which the Kentuckian frankly admitted that his program was an intersectional transfer of wealth, tariff arguments were potentially violent. Mason predicted in Philadelphia that the requirement of a bare majority for the enactment of tariff legislation would lead to Northern exploitation of the South of the kind Clay later made famous. Madison immediately issued a long declamation on the impossibility of such a turn of events.

[9] For a full discussion of the tariff issue, see three books by Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, 2nd ed. (New York: Madison Books, 1999), pp. 329–43, Those Dirty Rotten Taxes: The Tax Revolts that Built America (New York: The Free Press, 1998), pp. 81–112, and When In The Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). See also Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp. 2, 4, 43–44, 161–64, 231–38. Finally, see Phillip S. Foner, Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and The Irrepressible Conflict (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1941), pp. 275–305.

[10] For a full discussion, see Donald W. Livingston, “The Secession Tradition in America,” pp. 1–33, and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “Yankee Confederates: New England Secessionists Movement Prior to the War Between the States,” pp. 135–53, in Secession, State and Liberty, David Gordon, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998).

[11] John Shipley Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command (Nashville, Tenn.: Bill Coats, 1991), p. xv (emphasis added).

[12] Ibid., p. 121.

[13] Ibid., pp. 105–06.

[14] Ibid., p. 110.

[15] Ibid., p. 122.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., p. 126.

[18] Ibid., pp. 48–52.

[19] Ibid., p. 63.

[20] Ibid., p. 66.

[21] Ibid., p. 75.

[22] Ibid., p. 92.

[23] Ibid., p. 156

[24] Swanberg, First Blood, pp. 121, 123, 127, 145.

[25] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, pp. 149–51.

[26] Ibid., p. 152.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid., p. 154.

[29] Ibid., p. 153.

[30] Frank Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States (New York: Putnam, 1931), p. 167.

[31] David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), p. 321.

[32] John Nevin, Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of Navy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), p. 311.

[33] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 321.

[34] Charles W. Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” The Journal of Southern History 3 (Southern Historical Association, February-November, 1937): 264.

[35] Carl Van Doren, ed., “First Inaugural Address,” The Literary Works of Abraham Lincoln (Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1970), pp. 177–78 (emphasis added).

[36] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 163.

[37] Ibid., pp. 163–64, (emphasis added).

[38] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 322.

[39] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 264.

[40] William C. Davis, A Government of Our Own: The Making of the Confederacy (New York: The Free Press, 1994), pp. 340–41.

[41] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 165 (emphasis added).

[42] Ibid.

[43] Ibid., p. 166.

[44] Ibid., p. 167.

[45] Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln, the Man (Columbia, S.C.: The Foundation for American Education, 1997), p. 392 (emphasis added).

[46] Ibid. (emphasis added).

[47] Ibid., pp. 392–93.

[48] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 171 (emphasis added).

[49] Masters, Lincoln, the Man, p. 393 (emphasis added).

[50] Ibid., (emphasis added).

[51] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 172 (emphasis added).

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 268.

[54] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, pp. 340–41.

[55] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, pp. 176–78.

[56] Ibid., p. 147.

[57] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 340.

[58] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 274.

[59] Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 281–82.

[60] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 191.

[61] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 345.

[62] Ibid., p. 347.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, pp. 197–99.

[65] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 361.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 197.

[68] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 363.

[69] Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 589–91.

[70] Charles Adams, Those Dirty Rotten Taxes, pp. 102–03.

[71] Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession, pp. 598–601.

[72] Adams, Those Dirty Rotten Taxes, p. 103.

[73] Ibid.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Ibid., pp. 104–05 (emphasis in the original).

[76] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 272 (emphasis in the original).

[77] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 342 (emphasis in the original).

[78] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 272 (emphasis in the original).

[79] Ibid., pp. 272–73.

[80] Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), p. 44.

[81] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 341.

[82] Ibid., pp. 368–69; for original documents, see Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), pp. 316–18, 136–37, 153–55. See also, Howard K. Beale, Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (New York: Norton, 1960), vol. 1, p. 37.

[83] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, pp. 369–70.

[84] Van Doren, ed., The Literary Works of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 183–84.

[85] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 347.

[86] Ibid., p. 348.

[87] Ibid.

[88] Ibid.

[89] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 202.

[90] Robert L. Dabney, “Memoir of a Narrative Received of Colonel John B. Baldwin of Staunton, Touching the Origin of the War,” Discussions (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Publications, 1994), pp. 87–110.

[91] Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, pp. 354–58 and see footnote 47, p. 357.

[92] Dabney, Discussions, p. 92 (emphasis in the original).

[93] Ibid. (emphasis in the original).

[94] Ibid., p. 94.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ibid. (emphasis in the original).

[97] Ibid., p. 97.

[98] Ibid., p. 98.

[99] Ibid., pp. 98–99.

[100] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 211.

[101] Ibid., p. 212.

[102] Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861, p. 282.

[103] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 219 (emphasis in the original).

[104] Ibid., pp. 223–24 (emphasis added).

[105] Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (Nashville, Tenn: William Mayes Coats, 1996), vol. 1, p. 284.

[106] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 280.

[107] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 230 (emphasis in the original).

[108] Ibid.

[109] Ibid., p. 231.

[110] Ibid., p. 233.

[111] Catton, The Coming Fury, p. 297.

[112] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 263.

[113] Foote, The Civil War, pp. 47–48.

[114] Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, p. 716.

[115] Ibid., pp. 718–19 (emphasis in the original).

[116] Ibid., pp. 711–13 (emphasis in the original).

[117] Ibid., pp. 706–08 (emphasis in the original).

[118] Foote, The Civil War, p. 50.

[119] James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 50.

[120] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 288.

[121] Ibid., p. 265.

[122] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” pp. 284–85.

[123] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 227 (emphasis added).

[124] Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 1, pp. 292–95 (emphasis in the original).

[125] Ibid., pp. 297. Also, see explanation of Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional View of the War Between the States (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Publications, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 34–36, 349. For another compact and reasonable interpretation of Lincoln’s first shot maneuver, see Stampp, And the War Came, pp. 263–86.

[126] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt,” in Lincoln The War President: The Gettysburg Lectures, Gabor S. Boritt, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 155–56; Also for other details of Lincoln’s unconstitutional conduct see James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln.

[127] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command.

[128] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 285.

[129] Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command, p. 152.

[130] Ramsdell, “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” p. 286.

[131] Ibid.

[132] Ibid.

[133] Ibid., pp. 287–88 (emphasis added).

[134] Ibid., p. 288.

[135] Masters, Lincoln, the Man, p. 418 (emphasis added).

[136] Boritt, “War Opponent and War President,” in Lincoln, the War President: The Gettysburg Lectures, Gabor S. Boritt, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 190–91. Also, for a more full explanation of Lincoln’s attack on President Polk, see Masters, Lincoln, the Man, pp. 97–98.

[137] Mark E. Neelly, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 213 (emphasis in the original).

[138] Boritt, ed., “War Opponent and War President,” p. 191.

[139] Ibid. (emphasis in the original).

[140] Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 48.

[141] J. Rufus Fears, ed., Essays in the History of Liberty, Selected Writings of Lord Acton (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1985), vol. 1, p. 363.

[142] Ibid. (emphasis added).

[143] Ibid., p. 366.

[144] Carl N. Degler, “The United States and National Unification,” in Lincoln, the War President: The Gettysburg Lectures, Gabor S. Boritt, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 106.

[145] Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, p. 57.

[146] Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), p. 400.

[147] Neally, Jr., The Fate of Liberty, pp. 10, 23.

[148] Christopher N. May, In the Name of War: Judicial Review and the War Powers Since 1918 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 19.

[149] Bart Rhett Talbert, Maryland: The South’s First Casualty (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge, 1995), pp. 59–66 (emphasis added).

[150] John A. Marshall, American Bastile: A History of the Illegal Arrests and Imprisonment of American Citizens in the Northern and Border States, on Account of Their Political Opinions, During the Late Civil War (Wiggins, Miss.: Crown Rights, [1881] 1998), pp. 645–46.

[151] Masters, Lincoln, the Man, p. 411.

[152] Degler, “The United States and National Unification,” pp. 92–93.

[153] Ibid., pp. 95–96.

[154] Ibid., p. 102.

[155] Ibid., p. 103.

[156] Ibid., pp. 107–08.

[157] Ibid., p. 108.

[158] Charles L.C. Minor, The Real Lincoln: From the Testimony of His Contemporaries, 4th ed. (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Publications, 1992), p. 256.

[159] Stig Forster and Gorg Nagler, eds., On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 71.

[160] Ibid.

[161] Degler, “The United States and National Unification,” p. 102.

[162] Ibid., p. 106.

[163] Ibid., p. 109.

[164] Ibid., p. 108 (emphasis added).

[165] See the excellent book by Frank Van der Linden, Lincoln: The Road to War (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 1998), p. 329, where the author supports this general conclusion but fails to recognize the tariff issue which caused Northern political and economic interests to demand a war to prevent Southern secession.