Aren't you forgetting that whole 'attack on Fort Sumter' thing?
I would attack someone who wouldn't leave my property too. But the truth is that the action was provoked by U.S. President James Buchanan and then Lincoln attempting to add more guns and resupply the fort. Also remember that not a single soldier died in the battles.
If Lincoln had withdrawn from Sumter and not launched headlong into a war there wouldn't have been 660,000 deaths. All the casualties and the later abuses of power fall squarely on Lincoln's shoulders.
I have a good friend whom i've known for 33 years. We went to High school together. He happens to be black, and he has always had an extreme interest in History, especially regarding Slavery and the Civil war.
One day he told me that he had learned a very interesting thing that day. Lincoln was a genius because he single handedly engineered the Civil War in a manner such as Patton bragged he would do to the Russians.
Lincoln was aware that the Federal troops at Fort Sumter were being blockaded by the Confederates. South Carolina wanted Federal troops removed from Charleston Harbor because they regarded the property as theirs, and the Federals as an illegal occupying force which was not respecting their sovereignty. Lincoln's officers had come to him with a plan to provide supplies to the fort from the sea, without having to confront the confederate troops blocking land access.
According to my friend, Lincoln was having none of this. He sent a letter to the Confederate leadership informing them that on a certain date, he was sending a supply train to re-supply the fort. My friend said that Lincoln knew that this would be regarded as a provocative act by the confederates, and would likely induce them to attack the contingent at Fort Sumter. My friend said that at this same time, Lincoln dispatched a letter to the commander of Fort Sumter informing him that he would soon be attacked by the Confederates, and that he was to take all steps to reduce loss of life, hold the Fort for one day, and then surrender it, which is exactly what happened.
The Confederates did attack the Fort with cannon fire, yet no one was killed as a result of it. (Were they really aiming to kill anyone, or just making noise?) The only Union casualties were the result of a surrender ceremony in which Union forces were firing a cannon that oddly enough blew up and killed three of them. (If I remember correctly.)
Lincoln knew that the newspapers of the Northern states would be behind him only if the South could be induced to attack first. Had Lincoln initiated the aggression, he would have been roundly denounced by the states he needed to wage a conflict. By maneuvering the confederates into initiating the hostilities, he got them to look like the bad guys for the Entire Northern press. (A group still causing us problems today.)
Lincoln thought the Confederates were just playing at government, and thought that a quick force sent down to chastise them would put an end to the succession nonsense. Lincoln underestimated their determination to be independent, and unknowingly triggered a conflict which exceeded anything that anyone at the time would have thought plausible. Everyone thought it would be a quick and easy little jaunt, but it escalated into the most horrific calamity in American History.
If it is true that Lincoln intentionally induced the attack on Fort Sumter, than he was just too clever by half.
“Aren’t you forgetting that whole ‘attack on Fort Sumter’ thing?”
You mean that thing that killed zero people. That thing which in itself in no way justified calling for 70,000 troops nor blockading Southern ports.
You know, there’s a reason people justify the war via slavery or by inventing a plot to invade the North. Because “they shot up our fort” just leads to questioning whether it wad worth it.
Plus, it’s a lie. Not to say that it wasn’t an act of war, but the war we got was not a war you fight to get back at someone tor shelling a tory. It was a war of conquest, not a war of wrist slapping.