Nobody EVER outmaneuvered Lincoln, probably the most effective pure politician in US history. Johnson, OTOH, was perhaps the worst. He alienated even people who really, really wanted to support him.
I agree with you. Lincoln was exceedingly shrewd. This is why I find it credible that he correctly manipulated the Confederates into starting the war. All they had to do was sit on their hands, and the Secession would have become a fait accompli. The only thing which could have changed the dynamic was if they gave the Union an excuse to wage war.
Que Abraham Lincoln and his brilliant ploy to get them to attack. I don't know if he played them like a fiddle, but it is not an unreasonable conjecture from what I've seen. One of my oldest Friends who is Black, and a History Major, thoroughly believes that Lincoln engineered the start of the Civil war by his ability to read and predict people.
Yes, Lincoln was quite the clever fellow.
Everybody misunderestimated him. Seward even sent him a memo intimating Lincoln should delegate power to run the government to him, because Lincoln couldn't handle it.
Of course, after a year or so everybody looked around, noticed what he'd accomplished in that year and said, "Wait, what?"
What is even more interesting is that even his greatest rivals, like Seward, generally became loyal supporters as they got to know him.
The war started with the Gulf of Tonkin incident . . . er, I mean the Fort Sumter incident.
i dunno but if he was really really smart he would have worked to avoid a civil war and deconstruct slavery in a way that would not have caused the problems we have today. a lot of Black and white slaves to government. i’m not a civil war history expert but this is just my opinion from where i see things today. Fed government control based on the 14th amendment which wasn’t needed. Once there was no slavery everyone born in the US had the same status under the existing constitution. enforcement of the constitution which didn’t happen is the same problem we have today. make another law, make another amendment, don’t enforce the one we have.
Silly. It was a volatile situation. A lot of different things could have happened. Maybe Southerners would have realized how foolish the whole thing was and given it up. That was certainly what unionists hoped for and expected.
I would suggest that the secessionist leadership wanted a major break, a point of no return. They also wanted something dramatic to tip Virginia and the Upper South, which had rejected secession, into the secessionist camp. If the event was dramatic enough, it might bring the Border States into the Confederacy.
Also, Davis and his government were like the French Revolutionary leader who went running after the crowd saying "I must follow them for I am their leader." They had to get out in front of the hotheads in South Carolina and elsewhere and show that they were really running the show. They had to demonstrate their leadership and earn public support somehow.
So no, they weren't going to sit on their hands, and they weren't necessarily "manipulated" into anything either.
The U.S. was responsible because you think the Declaration of Independence OK'd it and Lincoln somehow tricked them into starting the war. I find it very amusing that you don't think the South bears any responsibility for anything that happened to them.