On this date in 1865

[Bull Snipe]

Troops in the Army of the Tennessee, under the Command of General Oliver O.Howard, entered Columbia, South Carolina. For the next three days, a rampage of destruction by the Union Army soldiers resulted in two thirds of the city being destroyed. General Howard's forces were part of General William T.Sherman's Armies advancing North from Savannah, Georgia.

[PeaRidge]

I am not inclined to allow nonsense to beget nonsense.

[BroJoeK]

x to ought-six: "The ships were sent to resupply the fort, not to "reinforce" it, so far as I know. "

PeaRidge to x: "If you accept the validity of the 'Official Records...' and Lincoln's statement of approval, then you see his order to reinforce.
He said the same thing in his orders to go in to Pensacola the same day.
Here in Lincoln's words:..."

In fact there is a whole series of letters & orders which have been often posted on these threads.
What they make clear is, the distinction between "reinforcement" versus "resupply" was not fully realized by Lincoln's people in the beginning, but that by the time his mission was launched, Lincoln did order the mission was resupply first, then reinforce only if they met Confederate resistance.

So the message Lincoln sent to South Carolina Governor Pickens was consistent with the final orders issued to his mission leaders: resupply only if no resistance.

Regardless, it's a distinction without a meaning.
Many historical examples exist for similar situations which did not result in war because the local power refused to start it.
A partial listing includes:

1. British forts in several US states (New York, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania) after 1783, some remaining through the War of 1812.
   The Brits resupplied or reinforced their forts at will, and even though they controlled shipping on the Great Lakes, America's greatest highway to the interior in those days, the US never took British forts on US terriroty as a casus belli, but instead relied on long-term, very patient diplomacy to finally remove them all.

2. Allied forces in Berlin after WWII, which Stalin wanted removed, but was sensible enough not to start war by attacking them.
   Instead, he cut off their resupply and reinforcement land transportation, leading to the famous Berlin Airlift.

3. US forces at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which just as the Confederacy claimed Fort Sumter was illegitimate, so the Commie Cubans claim the US Gitmo base is illegitimate, and demand its removal.
   But we continue to resupply and reinforce it at will, regardless of Commie Cuban demands.
   And if the Cubans were to use such US missions as their excuse to start war, it would be on them, and we would respond accordingly.

And so with Fort Sumter, Jefferson Davis' decision to use it as his excuse to start Civil War was strictly his own, not "forced" by anything other than his own judgment as to the Confederacy's best interests.
And Davis was absolutely not mistaken, short term, since the Confederacy immediately almost doubled in size and did double in white population with the joining of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas.
Longer term, of course, Davis' Confederacy paid the price predicted at the time by his Secretary of State, Robert Toombs to President Davis:

"Mr. President, 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 mountain 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."

[BroJoeK]

ought-six: "Someone points a gun at your head, and you knock it away; are you the aggressor because you physically struck at the other fellow?"

In 1860 Fort Sumter was not a gun pointed at anybody, it was incomplete & unmanned.
A tiny US Army garrison was stationed nearby and fled to Fort Sumter to escape capture by South Carolina militia.
Some claimed that escape was against orders, but regardless, those few Union troops had no orders to be a "gun" pointed at Charleston.
Nor would their commander, a Southerner,Major Anderson, allow such a thing.
So Confederate fears were greatly overblown.

Regardless, the Deep South public demanded action against the Fort, demands which Jefferson Davis could ignore only to his own political peril.
And besides, Virginia was balanced politically on a knife's edge between Union & secession, and needed only some act of war to push them into the Confederacy.
And along with Virginia, the entire Upper South and perhaps even Border South states.

In early April, 1861, the Confederacy was rapidly raising an army of 100,000 to oppose the Union's 16,000 man US Army, most posted in small forts out west.
Clearly, for Davis in April 1861, the benefits of war outweighed any risks.

"And the war came"