[BroJoeK]

man_in_tx: "Sounds logical to me."

Napolitano is misinformed and highly confused on a number of key points, including:

• What was the Federal Union's response to Deep-South secession in early 1861?
  (Answer: virtually nothing.)

• Who committed dozens of acts of insurrection and rebellion against the United States?
  (Answer: Confederates seizing Federal forts, ships, arsenals, armories, mints, etc., firing on Federal ships, threatening Federal officials -- January through April 1861.)

• What was President Lincoln's policy in March of 1861 regarding war with the Confederacy?
  (Answer: no war unless Confederates started it.)

• Who first raised an army of 100,000 troops? (Answer: the Confederacy, beginning on March 6, 1861, with another 400,000 on May 9).

• Who started Civil War?
  (Answer: Confederacy at Fort Sumter, April 12)

• Who first offered military aid to its forces operating within the other's states?
  (Answer: Jefferson Davis on April 23 offered military aid to Confederates in the Union state of Missouri.)

• Who formally declared war?
  (Answer: Confederacy on May 6, 1861)

So Civil War came because Confederates wanted and started it, for reasons that are simple and obvious: they believed they would win, and war would be the fastest, simplest and most glorious way to resolve all legal issues.

Confederates wanted a Second War of Independence.
President Lincoln granted their wish, and defeated them.

By ignoring the fact that the United States was attacked and invaded in 1861, Napolitano makes a case that's otherwise not just illogical, but unintelligible.

[NKP_Vet]

“What was President Lincoln’s policy in March of 1861 regarding war with the Confederacy?
(Answer: no war unless Confederates started it.)”

Lincoln started it by not getting his Federal troops the hell out Charleston Harbor. SC was a free and independent state. Lincoln knew exactly what would happen by not leaving Charleston Harbor. He orchestrated the entire thing.

“Before his inauguration, Lincoln sent a secret message to Gen Winfield Scott, the U.S. general-in-chief, asking him to make preparations to relieve the Union forts in the South soon after Lincoln took office. Lincoln knew all along what he was going to do. President Jefferson Davis sent peace commissioners to Washington to negotiate a treaty with the Lincoln administration. Lincoln refused to meet with them; and he refused to permit Secretary of State Seward to meet with them. After Lincoln assumed the presidency, his principal generals recommended the immediate evacuation of Maj Anderson’s men from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor—which was now located on foreign soil. To resupply it by force at this point would be a deliberate act-of-war against the C.S.A.”

http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=130