To All,
Also, isn't a bit sophomoric to endlessly rant over who fired the first shot and who hit who first? For those for Lincoln's take on things, the entire Confederacy was illegal in the first place! What difference does it make to anyone who fired first if the war was on?
Frankly, I think it shows resolve that the South fired first. They should've fired a whole lot sooner (when Anderson, the Union commander holding out in Sumter, had rifles smuggled in).
What's the point about bellyaching "Well, they hit first. Whaaaahhahaha!!"???
After the South seceded and the North didn't recognize the Confederacy, it was TIME TO GET IT ON.
No, because the first resort to violence put the south squarely in the wrong and turned what had been a political crisis into a war. Toombs, if no one else in the CSA government, recognized this fact.
Oh, by the way, for all your talk about "battleships", the south had fired on the unarmed civilian ship "Star of the West" that Buchanan had attempted to use to resupply Sumter in January, and no Union ship had entered Charleston harbor when Beauregard began shelling the fort.