You are wrong on two levels. First, the United States Congress stated that the official opening of the war was the declaration of the blockade, and not the Charleston defense of its harbor.
If you still want to hang on the first to fire rationale, I will point out to you that it was Union Lieutenant Daniel Tompkins who fired the first shot in Charleston Harbor.
You are wrong on two levels. First, the United States Congress stated that the official opening of the war was the declaration of the blockade, and not the Charleston defense of its harbor.
If you still want to hang on the first to fire rationale, I will point out to you that it was Union Lieutenant Daniel Tompkins who fired the first shot in Charleston Harbor.
I think any normal person who'd been following this discussion for as long as I have would be sick of it by now.
It's always some stupid sophistry or other from you, Pea.
There was no official declaration of war, so you can play games with the date, but virtually everyone agrees that the war began with the firing on our flag on April 12, 1861.
If I wanted to I could say the war started when the first rebel seized the first federal property, but that's not the excepted beginning of the war.
Similarly, whatever obscure incident you want to make the beginning of the war doesn't change the accepted understanding of things.
A stray shot here or there doesn't make a war, so we ought to speak of the "first shots" in the plural, the military action that started the war.
Similarly, the formula in these things is often "a state of war has existed since" -- since Japan or Germany or the Confederacy did this or that to commence hostilities.
That's when the war began, not when you first get the news, or when you start to take steps to win the war that's already begun.
You want to blame Lincoln and absolve the rebels so you just assert things you want to believe. But really, who else is going to be convinced by such asininities?