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History is replete with such “little forts,” the world over. The forts at the mouth of Mobile Bay; Fort Pickens that protected Pensacola (and that the federal navy invested at the same time as Sumter). On a more global scale there was the fort on Corregidor that guarded Manila bay; Gibraltar was constructed to command the channel between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; the fort at Singapore was built to command the Strait of Malacca. I can go on and on.

Exactly. Gibraltar, Guantanamo, Hong Kong, Macao, Goa, Ceuta and Mellila, West Berlin, Konigsberg, Nagorno-Karabakh.

There have been plenty of enclaves, exclaves, semi-enclaves, and semi-enclaves -- territories of one country surrounded or almost surrounded by the territory of another country. Some of them have great strategic importance. Some are resented by the countries on their borders.

But we've grown accustomed to such places and so has international law. Calling them knives at the throat or guns at the head of the large states outside is overly dramatic sword-rattling. The Confederacy could have survived with two or three US forts off shore.

Jefferson Davis, though, was concerned that his government would collapse if he didn't get tough. Also, attacking the forts and starting a war could bring other slave states into the secessionist camp. But these political concerns shouldn't be mistaken for matters of national survival.

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“But we’ve grown accustomed to such places and so has international law. Calling them knives at the throat or guns at the head of the large states outside is overly dramatic sword-rattling. The Confederacy could have survived with two or three US forts off shore.”

We were talking about Fort Sumter and 1861, not about a fort in today’s political and social environment. You make the quintessential mistake in discussing history: Applying today’s standards and mores to a bygone era.

“Also, attacking the forts and starting a war could bring other slave states into the secessionist camp. But these political concerns shouldn’t be mistaken for matters of national survival.”

You mean other slave states such as Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky — even Massachusetts (yes, THAT Massachusetts, which even though had abolished slavery it allowed “grandfathered” slavery into its state law, which set forth that someone who was a slave when the law was enacted could remain a slave). Then, there was Mrs. U.S. Grant of Galena, Illinois who owned four slaves in 1861. But, of course, those states did not secede and join the Confederacy.