And the Confederate action of bombarding Sumter to rubble? Are you willing to say that was far more disproportionate to any provocation the South could name?
It is as if a woman slaps her husband, and he beats her face in with his fists. It was an excessive overreaction.
A simplistic and somewhat inaccurate analogy. It would be more like the wife took several shots at her husband and he got his gun and fired back. Would you call that an excessive overreaction?
It was most definitely a blunder.
Never mind what the South should have done, was what they did do justified? Did the actions the garrison at Sumter took justify being bombarded into surrender? Or was it an excessive overraction on the Confederacy's part?
No, it is quite accurate. If Ft. Sumter did not in any way match the level of destruction which would have been the result of a 35,000 man invasion.
If Ft. Sumter was a slap, First Battle of Bullrun was a punch to the face from what was initially intended to be a throat punch. (Seizure of Richmond and an end to the Confederacy.)
Subsequent events are perfectly analogous to a larger strong man brutally beating a woman into submission. Occasionally the Woman got in some good shots, but the Strength was always with the man.
Never mind what the South should have done, was what they did do justified? Did the actions the garrison at Sumter took justify being bombarded into surrender? Or was it an excessive overreaction on the Confederacy's part?
The answers to this question are in the eyes of the beholder. I have read that they tried to negotiate with Lincoln for Ft. Sumter, and that he initially agreed, then backed out, then led them to believe it would get resolved, then informed them that it would not, and so on.
I have read that they regarded this game playing with them as a deliberate affront and insult, and so perhaps they thought it was justified to put an end to it.
As an objective third party observer, (meaning me) it appears that this was a horrible blunder on their part. I have a friend that believes Lincoln cleverly engineered the whole thing to work out as it did, but even if that' true, which I don't know, they should have known better than to fall into such a trap.
What I have been contemplating since Tuesday is how this looked from the Union side. Apart from any skull duggery at manipulating events to make such a thing happened, if it was genuinely unexpected, then it would seem to be a very insulting and humiliating event, and one which requires an escalated response.
Though the thought of killing 600,000 people for a humiliation abhors me, they did not know at that time that this would be the eventual end result. Suffice it to say, some sort of violent response was warranted, but it should not have gone so far as an attempt to invade their territory and seize their capital city.
I was thinking more along the lines of sending the Navy and shelling Charleston or something. At the very least, the Soldiers that fired on Sumter.
It would have been better to have avoided the whole thing.