SIR: It having been determined to succor Fort Sumter, you have been selected for this important duty. Accordingly, you will take charge of the transports provided in New York, having the troops and supplies on board, to the entrance of Charleston Harbor, and endeavor, in the first instance, to deliver the subsistence. If you are opposed in this you are directed to report the fact to the senior naval officer off the harbor, who will be instructed by the Secretary of the Navy to use his entire force to open a passage, when you will, if possible, effect an entrance and place both the troops and supplies in Fort Sumter.I am, sir, very respectfull, your obedient servant,
Simon Cameron, Secretary of War
OR-Navies, Vol. 4, pg. 232
Mr. Lincoln jumped up from his chair, as Mr. Rives was standing, advanced one step towards him, and said, "Mr. Rives! Mr. Rives! if Virginia will stay in, I will withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter."Virginia remained in the union. Lincoln did not remove the troops. Lincoln LIED. Lincoln KNEW that resupply attempts would cause war:
Hiram Fuller, North and South, Londen: Chapman and Hall, 1863, p.261
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;rgn=div1;view=text;idno=lincoln4;node=lincoln4%3A432Lincoln wanted WAR. Despite his acknowledgement that such was invasion and cooercion (documented by PeaRidge in #349) . And Lincoln was ALLEGEDLY against coercion:Page 289
1st. The Fort cannot be permanently held without reinforcement.This point is too apparent too [sic] need proof
The cutting off supplies and consequent starvation, not to mention disease, would compel surrender in a few months at farthest, without firing a gun
2 The Fort cannot now be re-inforced without a large armament, involving of course a bloody conflict and great exasperation on both sides, and when re-inforced can only be held by sufficient number to garrison the post and to keep open communication with it by means of the harbor.
I have said that I did not believe that this Union could be cemented by blood. It is the sincere conviction of my heart still. Mr. Seward has said the same thing, in effect, in as many as two speeches, at least, and in his foreign dispatches he says, "The President willingly accepts the doctrine as true, that the Federal government cannot reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest;" and he adds, "Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state."
Letter of Kentucky Governor C. S. Morehead to Senator John J. Crittendon (23 Feb. 1861), The Life Of John. J. Crittendon: With Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, Mrs. Chapman Coleman ed., Philadelphia: J. B. Lippicott & Co. (1873), Vol. 1 pp. 338-339.
It seems as if you did not quite read the order.
I will give it to you again:
(Fox) “He is charged by authority here, with the command of an expedition (under cover of certain ships of war) whose object is, to reinforce Fort Sumter.”
Reinforce is action, not preparation.