[rustbucket]

On the twenty-ninth of March, Lincoln had ordered that three ships — the Pocahontas, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane — together with three hundred men and provisions be made ready to sail for the Charleston harbor.

On the twenty-eighth of March the Senate asked Lincoln if he had anything of note to tell them before they adjourned. He said no. From the Congressional Globe:

Mr. Powell, from the committee appointed to wait on the President of the United States and notify him that unless he has some further communication to make, the Senate is ready to adjourn, reported that the committee had waited on the President, and been informed by him that he had no further communication to make to the Senate.

Lincoln apparently wanted the Congress out of the way before he took action that his own advisers had warned him would result in a shooting war.

[smug]

Lincoln apparently wanted the Congress out of the way before he took action that his own advisers had warned him would result in a shooting war.

If I recollect correctly, it was John Hay that said exactly that in his diary that is published under the name "The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay".

[Non-Sequitur]

Lincoln apparently wanted the Congress out of the way before he took action that his own advisers had warned him would result in a shooting war.

A lot of that going around:

"Firing on that fort will inagurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen...At this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend in the North...You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it put us in the wrong; it is fatal." - Robert Toombs, April 1861.