Per Jefferson Davis 2 1/2 years before:
If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, since we cannot live peaceably together, to leave with the rights that we had before we were united, since we cannot enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations which may still subsist between us, drawn from the associations of our struggles from the revolutionary era to the present day, which may be beneficial to you as well as to us....if we must leave you, we can leave you with the good will which would prefer that your prosperity should continue. If we must part, I say we can put our relations upon that basis which will give you the advantages of a favored trade with us, and still make the intercourse mutually beneficial to each other.
"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."