Your recent posts to me weren't sounding like the old x whose posts I used to archive to read. On the other hand, this post is fine and for that I thank you.
That is an interesting Richmond Daily Dispatch quote. I hadn't seen it before -- I hadn't looked on that web site because I was focused on how the Morrill Tariff was going to affect the North. Had the war and the blockade not started, I think the tariff would have been a major problem for the North and a boon to the South whose ports would get much more business. But that is speculation on my part.
I don't believe the South seceded because of the tariff. The tariff was a smoldering issue that moved some people, but the slavery issue was more effective in firing up the masses.
What I do believe is that the effect of the two tariffs (Morrill and Confederate) would have been a great problem for Lincoln. As PeaRidge pointed out in post 328, a committee of concerned New York merchants visited Lincoln and talked about the tariff issue and how it was destroying business. My quote from the New York Day Book about the number of businesses that had shut down confirmed that the difference in rates between the two tariffs was a serious problem.
How could Lincoln solve the tariff problem and at the same time provoke the South to fire first? I think Lincoln had already analyzed the problem before the merchants arrived and decided on his course of action. He was a smart man who thought outside of the box.
The following things I’m sure you know. Lincoln’s generals and cabinet had told him that Fox’s plan for sending supplies to Sumter would result in a clash of arms. Lamon had told Lincoln the same thing based on his trip to Charleston. On March 28 Lincoln told the Senate that he didn’t have anything important to tell them and they could adjourn (which they did). On the same day, Lincoln asked for a draft of secret orders to be prepared for the Sumter expedition, the expedition that would likely result in a shooting war.
One definition of an act of war is doing something that will cause the other side to start fighting. On that basis the Sumter expedition qualified as an act of war. When he was informed that the Sumter expedition was coming, Anderson wrote that the coming expedition was the start of the war.
Lincoln then did not reconvene Congress until July 4. During the intervening time he maneuvered the country onto a war footing, calling for forces to invade the South, calling for the blockade, extending the service period of some in the army. He probably thought he couldn’t do that if Congress was there interfering and muddying up his plans.
I would provide two short quotes to support my theory, if you don’t mind.
May 1, 1861, Lincoln to Fox, the leader of the Sumter expedition
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.The result, of course, was war. Then there is this from Lincoln’s secretaries, Nicolay and Hay:
President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to "send bread to Anderson"; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun the civil war.
I had seen both of these quotes on these threads more than once. I’m sure you must have seen them too.
I see I’ve wandered off topic a bit, but I thought I would flesh out a little how the tariff might have played a role in Lincoln’s thinking and what he ended up doing that was consistent with neutering the tariff as an issue and provoking war with the South. I’ve Monday quarterbacked on these threads that the South would have been better off not to attack Sumter and let Lincoln try to stop foreign ships heading to Southern ports to collect his tariff. That would have been another act of war, this time against foreign countries. But who am I to say what should have been done?
Unfortunately, I will be traveling the next few days. I’ll respond to your other points when I return.
That definition leads a lot of room for subjectivity. The side that fires first will always argue that its actions were constrained or forced upon it by the enemy. If some group starts a hostage situation and you do something that gets them shooting, it doesn't follow that you started the war. I'd say you have to look at legal rights and principles, not simply say that the side which makes the last move before the other side starts shooting "started" the war.
When he was informed that the Sumter expedition was coming, Anderson wrote that the coming expedition was the start of the war.
I had heard that about Major Anderson, though I can't find the quote right now. I do find a reference to Adam Goodheart's recent book arguing that the war really "began" on December 26th 1860 when Anderson moved his force to Sumter and raised the flag. Or maybe it "began" when Buchanan sent the Star of the West to resupply the fort. Or maybe it began on January 9th, 1861 when that ship was fired on. I'll stick with the usual answer: the war began on April 12th, 1861 when the fort was attacked.
On the theory that Lincoln somehow tricked or manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot: It was a stand-off situation of the kind we are now familiar with. The important thing in the Northern debate was not to back down, as the free states' leaders were presumed to have done in 1820 and 1850 and in subsequent crises and upheavals. That was the primary question -- to back down, compromise, concede, or not. Lincoln decided to stand firm. He also decided not to fire the first shot. He was pretty up-front in his inaugural address:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
So there you have it. Lincoln put the matter in the Confederates' or rebels' hands. Was he disingenuous? Was he secretly hoping for war? I don't know what was going through his mind, and I can't prove a negative. I can't prove that the idea of hoping or wanting that the other side would start a war never ever crossed his mind.
But I will ask, wanted a war compared to whom or to what? Did Lincoln want a war more than Davis or the South Carolinians who proclaimed the Revolution of 1860? Did he want a war more than a peaceful resolution of the conflict or a back-down by his adversaries? Did he want a crushing war more than other presidents who've been in similar stand-off situations since the founding of the republic?
Compare Lincoln, Davis, and Pickens in 1861 to Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro in 1962, and it's not certain that Lincoln comes out the worse. How much of the idea of Lincoln tricking or manipulating Davis into war to crush the South has to do with the actual situation in 1861, and how much has to do with what actually happened later?
About the Fox quote: David Donald says that Fox was bitter about the failure of the relief expedition and blamed himself for it, and Lincoln was trying to reassure Fox that the action wasn't a total loss. If you read the whole letter it supports that reading. It's certainly possible that what Lincoln was referring to as a positive result of the unsuccessful campaign was the act of staying firm, of taking a stand. Even a defeat could have been regarded in a positive light if seen as the beginning of a new policy of firmness.
About the Hay-Nicolay quote: First, Hay and Nicolay were writing for an audience of Northerners who had lived through the war and had little doubt that the Union was right and the rebels were wrong. There wasn't any need to be cautious and guarded, since the readers would have agreed that the Confederates had started the war. Does that make their account more trustworthy than a more cautious, lawyered-up version written with an eye to winning arguments?
Maybe. Maybe not. Most of the time the "lawyered-up" version is less reliable. But at least it addresses issues that a more naive and unguarded account may not. In the version written for an audience that's always going to accept and admire one's story, there are temptations to play on the audience's emotions or to show off how clever one is and was.
But secondly, the quote as written doesn't necessarily prove that Lincoln was angling for war, just that if war began, it wouldn't be blamed on Lincoln. There's a distinction between setting a scene where war if it comes will have to be started by the other side and forcing the other side to fight. Of course, if you belong to the side that does fire the first shot you might be more than willing to claim that your actions were forced.
Maybe the problem here is that both sides wanted to act as the US often acts -- being firm, not backing down, letting the other side concede. My own view is that if you want to get independence from a government that you belonged to, you don't get arrogant about it. You show a modest, conciliatory spirit and consider a certain amount of deference now the price of full independence later. That's not something the secessionists of 1860 could do. But the results of their bad choice aren't necessarily something one can blame on their opponents.
FWIW, a lot of what gets posted online are anti-Lincoln editorials. Whether we're talking about outright pro-Southern, pro-secessionist newspapers or business papers that oppose any disruption or restriction of commerce, the choice of sources gives a very skewed view of what was happening. Here -- for a change -- is part of an April 11th editorial by the Indianapolis Daily Journal:
The Administration from the beginning has avowed its purpose to do nothing but hold the Government property, neither acknowledging nor attempting to destroy the assumed independence of the rebel States, till authorized by the Nation to do so. This is the policy avowed in the inaugural of Mr. Lincoln, and it has been acted on steadily. This is the policy of prudence and peace, and the policy of good order, and of the supremacy of law.--Mr. Lincoln could neither declare or do less without assuming the right to allow a State to secede at will, and that right clearly belongs only to the people who formed the Union. But the peace policy is to end in war. Why? Not because it assails anybody. Not because it coerces anybody. But because the seceding States are determined to have war; because they believe a war will drive to their support the border slave States, and unite them all in a great Southern Confederacy. A policy of peace is to them a policy of destruction. It encourages the growth of a reactionary feeling. It takes out of the way all the pride and resentment which could keep the people from feeling the weight of taxation, and the distress of their isolated condition. If forces them to reason, and to look at the consequences of their conduct. A war buries all these considerations in the fury and glory of battle, and the parade and pomp of arms. War will come because the Montgomery Government deems it the best way of bringing the border States, and of keeping down trouble at home.
With Charleston as full of fanatics as it was, you could send boats out to the fort to see what happens. Would the boats be fired on, ensuring that the US fired the first shot? Would the garrison surrender to a larger force without firing a shot? Would there be a lot of men milling around at the gates of the fort wondering what to do?
Once you get away from the idea of a "forced" war or a war by trickery, you realize that there were other options available at the time, if one had the wisdom and patience not to initiate force.