jeffersondem:
"It was Lincoln that used the Navy to engineer the Gulf of Tonkin Incident; I meant to say the Fort Sumter Incident." Fort Sumter had a similar effect as Pearl Harbor and 9/11, both of which conspiracy theorists have also claimed were "engineered".
But Jefferson Davis fully understood what was happening, and decided on war anyway, because:
"There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations."
Davis to Bragg, April 3, 1861
And those "other considerations" were so powerful they made Davis ignore the very accurate warning from his own Secretary of State Toombs:
"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."[19]"
Toombs to Davis, April 9, 1861.
That much is not in dispute. We may never know the reason why.
Well... actually, those "other considerations" are pretty easy to understand, and powerful reasons begin with Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee & Arkansas.
“Fort Sumter had a similar effect as Pearl Harbor and 9/11 . . .”
I'd have to look it up but for some reason I think it was you that published a Castro-length post some seasons back drawing an equivalency between the casualties of Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor.
Brings to mind a recent, succinct, non-pernicious comment made on another thread by one of my favorite northern commentators: “Never have I seen more long winded bs in all my life.”