The Point of No Return
At 6 P.M. on April 6, hours after learning of Captain Adams’s refusal to allow the reinforcement of Fort Pickens, Lincoln reluctantly sent the South Carolina governor word of Fox’s expedition, stating that “an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only, and that, if such 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.”126 The last phrase meant that if the Confederates fired on Sumter, then an attempt would be made to reinforce it with men, arms, and supplies. The next day elements of Fox’s squadron left New York for Charleston. The die was finally cast, though as late as April 8 Fox still thought that the expedition might be called off.
When Lincoln issued the order to Fox and sent the fateful message to Governor Pickens, he did so after consulting only with Welles, Fox, and Montgomery Blair. (In 1862, Lincoln said “that when he determined to give the rebels at Charleston notice of his purpose, the entire cabinet was against him.”)127 Upon learning of this action later that evening, Seward expressed astonishment. “I want no more at this time of the Administration,” he told George Harrington of the Treasury Department. “We are not yet in a position to go to war. While we have been quietly engaged in recalling as far and as fast as possible our scattered naval and military forces, the Rebels have been engaged in their preparation for an attack on Fort Sumpter, and the circumstances are such that any attempt on our part to bring on a conflict in Charleston Harbor … would meet with defeat and promptly arrest every effort of the loyal men” in the Upper South and Border States.128
Meanwhile, the Confederate commissioners were growing ever more alarmed as they read accounts of the fleet being outfitted in New York. On April 7, when Campbell relayed their concern to Seward, the secretary blandly reassured them: “Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see.” The commissioners inferred that the task force was bound for Pickens, since Seward pointedly made no mention of that fort. After the secretary of state formally turned down their renewed demand for recognition, they sent him a blistering letter and departed Washington.129 Campbell also wrote Seward, declaring that the Confederate authorities felt themselves the victims of “systematic duplicity.”130 Since the secretary had repeatedly assured him that Sumter would be abandoned, his reaction was understandable.
Lincoln could not be sure that his decision would precipitate a war, though he had good reason to believe that it might. On January 9 the South Carolinians had fired on the Star of the West when it tried to relieve the fort, and on April 3 a small schooner flying the stars and stripes had been shelled as it attempted to enter Charleston harbor. But there was a remote chance that the Confederates would hesitate to fire on a ship conveying food to hungry men. Such restraint seemed unlikely, however, for if Confederate authorities allowed the fort to be supplied, they would be humiliated and Unionism in the Upper South and Border States would be bolstered. By announcing that he was sending food rather than troops, Lincoln had put his opponents on the horns of a dilemma; both options were unpalatable. As the Union fleet sailed south, a journalist reported it was “conceded on all sides that it was a most happy stroke of policy on the part of the Government to make first an attempt to relieve Major Anderson with provisions simply, as the refusal of the revolutionists to allow what must appear as a simple act of humanity, will not only fasten odium upon them in the eyes of the entire civilized world, but also greatly add to the moral strength of the true Government in the North, and to the Union sentiment in the Border Slave States.”131 In the apt words of Lincoln’s private secretaries, when he “finally gave the order that the fleet should sail he was master of the situation; master of his Cabinet; master of the moral attitude and issues of the struggle; master of the public opinion which must arise out of the impending conflict; 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
A Democratic newspaper in Ohio argued that by sending the fleet to Charleston, Lincoln was “shrewdly inviting the secessionists to open the ball,” and a prominent New York Democrat, John L. O’Sullivan, saw “the cunning hand of the third rate village lawyer” at work. The president, Sullivan charged, had adroitly inveigled the South into firing the first shot in order to unite his party and to restore his sinking popularity.133 Actually, Lincoln hoped to avoid, not provoke, bloodshed. If the Fort Pickens strategy had worked, he might have been able to do so; but it failed. By April 6, when the president sent his fateful message to the governor of South Carolina, he had exhausted every peaceful option short of acknowledging the legitimacy of secession or surrendering the basic principles of the Republican Party. He probably believed that war might well come as a result of the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, though he did not want war. From Hurlbut he learned that relief ships would be stopped, but that did not necessarily mean that Sumter would be shelled. And it was possible that the fort would not come under attack just because relief ships were heading its way. After all, the South Carolinians had not fired on Sumter when the Star of the West approached it. But if war were to come, Lincoln understandably wanted the blame for starting it to fall on the Confederates. As he announced to secessionists in his inaugural address, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you, unless you first assail it. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.” It was widely believed in the North that “if the Southern Confederacy initiates a war for the simple reason that this government has seen fit to reinforce one of its garrisons, the entire responsibility of the conflict will rest with it.”134
Lincoln may have shared Gustavus Fox’s view that relieving Sumter was “the most important peace measure,” for the fort’s “weakness provokes an attack” and “more men & provisions &c. would prevent it & perhaps prevent entirely a civil war.”135 Even if war broke out, it might be brief and relatively bloodless.
As Porter and Fox began steaming southward on April 8, many Northerners took heart. A Connecticut Republican reported that “we all feel that Mr Lincoln has something of the Old Hickory about him. I hear on every hand. … ‘Give the South (the rebels) a good thrashing.’ ”136 A member of the Seventh New York National Guard urged the president to “[g]ive those South Carolina ruffians h–l and we will support you.”137 On April 11, when Lincoln asked John Minor Botts what remedy might cure secessionism, the Virginian replied: “Grape for the ranks and hemp for the leaders.”138
Girding for War
If war did result from Lincoln’s decision, he was assured of military assistance by Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton, who proffered 6,000 militia to enforce the laws; by an agent of John A. Andrew, governor of Massachusetts, who pledged that 2,000 “picked troops ready for service” would be dispatched as soon as they were needed; by the governor of Rhode Island, who offered to defend Washington with “a Battery of light Artillery, 6 pr. Horses & men complete, and a force of 1000 men completely disciplined & equipped”; by a Kansan who proposed to raise 1,000 men to combat the secessionists; and by a patriotic New Yorker who wrote the president saying: “In the present crisis, and distracted state of the country, if your Honor wishes colored volunteers, you have only to signify by answering the above note at 70 E. 13 St. N.Y.C., with instructions, and the above will meet with prompt attention, whenever your honor wishes them.”139 General Scott recommended that ten companies of militia be recruited to protect the capital, and on April 11, the District of Columbia Militia was mustered into federal service.140
On the fateful sixth day of April, Lincoln met with the governors of Indiana, Maine, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, who had been summoned to the capital by Horace Greeley to urge a hard line against secessionists. In addition, the president had invited Pennsylvania Governor Andrew G. Curtin to Washington, warning that the District seemed to be
in danger of attack. To help gird for such a possibility, Lincoln wanted troops from the Keystone State available. He urged Curtin to persuade his legislature to reorganize the state’s militia. The governor agreed to do so and promptly began drafting a message to the lawmakers in Harrisburg. On April 8, the president wrote him: “I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it.”141 Three days later, the legislators appropriated $500,000 for arming the militia. Lincoln asked several other governors to call up their militias and be prepared to defend the capital on a moment’s notice. He predicted “that when the ball opened,” Washington “will be the first [city] that will be attacked.” He had been advised that he would have to take refuge elsewhere but insisted that he would remain in Washington “even if he had to be protected and surrounded by the military arm of the government.”142
In the midst of all the excitement and anxiety, office seekers continued to pester Lincoln, who jocularly remarked on the morning of April 10 “that he would henceforth require all applicants to demonstrate their patriotism by serving three months at Forts Sumter and Pickens.”143 More soberly, he told a caller in the evening that soon it would become clear “whether the revolutionists dare to fire upon an unarmed vessel sent to the rescue of our starving soldiers.” With a calm demeanor that contrasted sharply with the agitation around him, he “spoke very composedly” and seemed ready to abide by the consequences of his decision to provision Fort Sumter.144 “I hope it may do some good,” he told a congressman.145
The Confederate Decision to Inaugurate War
On April 10, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet had instructed the general in charge at Charleston, P. G. T. Beauregard, to insist upon the immediate surrender of Sumter; if Anderson declined, Beauregard was to reduce the fort. In authorizing the first shot, Davis rather than Lincoln seems to have been motivated by short-term political considerations. He desperately wanted the Upper South and Border States to join the Confederacy, and he could reasonably assume that once hostilities began, the eight Slave States that were not yet part of his government would join with the Deep South. Other secessionists believed that to be the case. Former Congressman J. L. Pugh of Alabama explained in January, “I am oppressed by the apprehension that we are in great danger from the reconstructionists” (i.e., those who supported reunification of the country). Should the Republicans back the Crittenden Compromise, “the border states will present an unbroken front & my fear is we shall be overwhelmed.” That threat would disappear once fighting broke out. “Now pardon me for suggesting that South Carolina has the power of putting us beyond the reach of reconstruction by taking Fort Sumter at any cost.”146 To a Charleston crowd, Virginia fire-eater Roger Pryor declared on April 10: “I assure you that just so certain as to-morrow’s sun will rise upon us, just so certain will Virginia be a member of the Southern Confederation. We will put her in if you but strike a blow.”147 As the fleet sailed toward Charleston, the Indianapolis Journal editorialized that “the seceding States are determined to have war; because they believe a war will drive to their support the border slave States, and unite them all in a great Southern Confederacy. A policy of peace is to them a policy of destruction. It encourages the growth of a reactionary feeling. It takes out of the way all the pride and resentment which could keep the people from feeling the weight of taxation, and the distress of their isolated condition. It forces them to reason, and to look at the consequences of their conduct. A war buries all these considerations in the fury and glory of battle, and the parade and pomp of arms.”148 A Memphis newspaper anticipated that Davis might launch an attack “for the mere purpose of solidifying the revolution which has been precipitated” by “dragging into it the ‘Border States.’ ”149 Similarly, a correspondent for the New York Times speculated that “the necessity of excitement to sustain the secession movement may compel Mr. Davis either to assent to an open demonstration against the United States, or permit it to take place without opposition on his part.”150
Six weeks after the fall of Sumter, Joseph Holt of Kentucky wrote that the Confederate leadership “sought the clash of arms and the effusion of blood as an instrumentality for impressing the Border States.”151 William Howard Russell of the London Times offered a similar analysis of the Confederate leaders: “When they thought that the time was ripe for exciting the border States and dragging them into it, they fired upon Fort Sumter.”152 Upon hearing of the bombardment, a leading Unionist member of the Virginia secession convention wondered if the South Carolinians “have really begun the war without necessity, in order to compel us to take part.”153
While Davis wanted to maneuver the North into firing the first shot at Sumter, he was nonetheless willing to start the war at Fort Pickens. On February 3, he authorized the Confederate commander at Pensacola, his old friend Braxton Bragg, to bombard it, provided that he could capture it quickly. Ideally, Davis wrote, it would be advantageous to have the North fire the first shot, “but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations.”154 Davis did not identify those “other considerations,” but one was doubtless the likelihood that Slave States north of the Confederacy would join it. (The war would probably have started at Fort Pickens if Bragg had felt more confident of his ability to carry it.)
The need to stoke secessionist fires was real. In Alabama, the editor of the Mobile Mercury warned that the Confederacy “is sinking into a fatal apathy, and the spirit and even the patriotism of the people is oozing out under this do-nothing policy. If something is not done pretty soon, decisive, either evacuation or expulsion [of the Sumter garrison], the whole country [i.e., the Confederacy] will become so disgusted with the sham of southern independence that the first chance the people get at a popular election they will turn the whole movement topsy-turvy so bad that it never on earth can be righted again.”155 Another Alabamian, James G. Gilchrist, exclaimed to the Confederate secretary of war in mid-March: “Sir, unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days!”156
On April 10, ex-Senator Louis Wigfall of Texas telegraphed Davis from Charleston urging that the Confederates “take Fort Sumter before we have to fight the fleet and the Fort. General Beauregard will not act without your order. Let me suggest to you to send the order to him to begin the attack as soon as he is ready. Virginia is excited by the preparations, and a bold stroke on our side will complete her purposes. Policy and prudence are urgent upon us to begin at once.”157
Dissenting was Secretary of State Robert Toombs, who warned Davis against an attack on Sumter. He maintained that “at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.” Firing on that fort, he said, “will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen.”158 (Confederate commissioners in Washington had warned Toombs that an attack on Sumter would make the South appear “guilty of the unnecessary shedding of blood, & it would tend to concentrate public opinion at the North in favor of their government.”)159 In early April, Davis received similar counsel from Richard Lathers, a South Carolinian then living in New York, who predicted that “Civil war for the destruction of the Union, will unite every man at the North, irrespective of party or affiliation, in support of his government and the flag of his country. If conciliation now fails to protect the Union, the coldest man of the North will lay aside enterprises and profitable industry, and will fill the armies in defense of the supremacy of the government and its laws.”160 Simon Bolivar Buckner of Kentucky made a similar prophecy to the governor of his state: “If the south should aggress it will unite public sentiment at the north against them and civil war will ensue.”161
Ignoring such advice, Davis made his fateful decision of April 10, even though there was n
o practical military reason for shelling Sumter. As he himself had pointed out in January, the “little garrison in its present position presses on nothing but a point of pride.”162 The attack on Sumter proved to be a major blunder, for it outraged and unified the North while dampening pro-Confederate sympathy in the Border States. If those states (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware) had made common cause with their Southern sisters, Davis’s government might well have won the war. It is impossible to know exactly why the Confederate president made such a costly mistake. Because of Seward’s “systematic duplicity” in dealing with the Confederate commissioners, and because of the numerous press reports indicating that Sumter would be evacuated, Davis mistrusted the Lincoln administration and its declarations of peaceful intent. News that Northern warships were fitting out for unknown destinations probably intensified his suspicion. Davis may also have been motivated by pique and wounded pride; hypersensitive about his honor, he probably felt offended by Lincoln’s failure to recognize his government. Instead of notifying the Confederate authorities (i.e., Davis) of his intention to resupply Sumter, Lincoln had alerted the governor of South Carolina.
More significant, perhaps, was Davis’s evident misreading of public opinion in the Border States and the North. Lincoln has been criticized for underestimating the strength of Southern disunionism, but insofar as the Civil War resulted from a misunderstanding of popular sentiment, Davis was at least as culpable. If the Confederate leader had been more sensitive to the political climate in the Border States, he could have allowed Fort Sumter to be resupplied and waited for an occasion when slavery rather than Union was perceived to be the central issue dividing the sections.
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