April 16, 1861, The Buffalo Daily Courier
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 accomplished.
That makes no sense. What were they supposed to do? Deliver the supplies while the fort was under ferocious fire? Fire back? The fleet did what they would do if it were part of a resupply mission: they stayed out of the fight, recognizing that they couldn't resupply the fort any more.
If the ships had gone in shooting it would be hard to maintain that the fleet had been sent to Charleston on a peaceful resupply mission. The ships didn't go in shooting, and the newspaper takes that as proof that the mission wasn't peaceful. Not much logic there.
Nineteenth century newspapers were all partisan. The Buffalo Daily Courier was a Democratic paper. It represented the Democrat point of view. Citing its editorials or opinions proves no more than quoting what a partisan hack says on cable television today.