Jeff Davis should have taken the advice of Confederate Secretary of State Robert Toombs who told him not to attack Fort Sumter: “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.” It was a very accurate analysis by Mr. Toombs.
Davis should instead have sued Lincoln to acknowledge secession (and for possession of the forts), and the 1861 US Supreme Court, the same court that had recently issued the Dred Scott decision, would have given it to him.
80 years later the Japanese copied Jeff Davis’ mistake when they attacked Pearl Harbor. If they had instead ignored the US and occupied the rest of Asia (except the Philippines) what could Roosevelt have done about it? Nothing!
And Lincoln should have taken the advice of his entire cabinet who told him not to attack the confederates with his war fleet. They *TOLD* him it would trigger a war.
He did it anyway. Jeff Davis could only respond in kind, which is what he did.
80 years later the Japanese copied Jeff Davis’ mistake when they attacked Pearl Harbor.
Well except for the fact that Pearl Harbor was completely located in US territory, was of vital national interest, they killed 2000 men or so and did many billions of dollars worth of damage while presenting a threat to all American interests in the Pacific.
At Sumter, no one was killed, it served absolutely no US interest before or after the Civil War, it was at the entrance of a very important port city of South Carolina, and the Union forces started it by seizing the place in the dead of night.
The difference between Pearl Harbor and Fort Sumter is the Difference between lighting and a lightning bug.