[you]: That definition leads a lot of room for subjectivity.
That’s true for both sides. I think Lincoln was counting on the South firing on his expedition or on Sumter. With one stroke he was able to get the South to shoot first, get the opportunity to blockade Southern Ports thus negating the difference in tariff rates, and get the backing of the Northern population because of the firing on the flag. He also succeeded or lucked into losing the battle of Fort Sumter, which meant that he didn't have to keep ferrying supplies to Sumter and defending the fort. Remember too that Lincoln had secretly pulled one of the key ships away from the Sumter expedition without alerting Fox and sent it to Fort Pickens. The Sumter expedition was too small to succeed -- far, far smaller than Anderson or Winfield Scott had previously advised would be required.
Years ago I saw this newspaper quote on another web site. I haven’t seen the paper itself, but it does echo my interpretations:
"Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor." [Source: Providence Daily Post, April 13 1861].
As I think I alluded to earlier, Lincoln needed to (and did) keep Congress out of the way so he could take actions such as invading the South (Virginia, at least) that committed the country to war. Given the natural patriotic feeling in the North generated by all of this, Congress would have no political will to oppose his actions.
[me]: When he was informed that the Sumter expedition was coming, Anderson wrote that the coming expedition was the start of the war.
[you]: 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.
I believe you and I had a discussion once about what date to use for the start of the war. Here is the Anderson quote [Source, my emphasis below]:
I had the honor to receive by yesterday's mail the letter of the honorable Secretary of War, dated April 4, and confess that what he there states surprises me very greatly, following as it does and contradicting so positively the assurance Mr. Crawford telegraphed he was authorized to make. I trust that this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.
It is, of course, now too late for me to give any advice in reference to the proposed scheme of Captain Fox. I fear that its result cannot fail to be disastrous to all concerned. ...
... I ought to have been informed that this expedition was to come. Colonel Lamon's remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be carried out. We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. That God will still avert it, and cause us to resort to pacific measures to maintain our rights, is my ardent prayer.
Anderson was not the only one to recognize what Lincoln was doing would start a war. Lincoln on April 5 gave a verbal order to reinforce Fort Pickens without telling the Confederates. He followed this up with a written order. The Confederates and the Union forces in Pensacola were still obeying the truce that had been negotiated between Florida and the Buchanan Administration. The Confederates had promised not to attack Fort Pickens if the Union did not reinforce it. A violation of the truce could result in a shooting war.
When the instruction to reinforce Fort Pickens finally arrived after much delay, the commander of the Union force off Pensacola, Captain Adams, refused to obey the order. Here is what he said at the time [Official Records of the Navies, Series 1, Vol. 4, pages 109-110, my emphasis below]:
… it [reinforcing Fort Pickens] would be considered not only a declaration but an act of war. … While I can not take on myself under such insufficient authority as General Scott's order the fearful responsibility of an act which seems to render civil war inevitable, I am ready at all times to carry out whatever orders I may receive from the honorable Secretary of the Navy.Because of the extensive delay, Lincoln asked Montgomery Meigs to help prepare a secret expedition to reinforce Fort Pickens. The expedition got underway on April 6. Here is what Meigs wrote on board the ship heading to Pensacola with orders to reinforce Fort Pickens in violation of the negotiated truce at that fort [Source, my emphasis below]
This is the beginning of the war which every statesman and soldier has foreseen since the passage of the South Carolina ordinance of secession.
These three key guys recognized at the time that Lincoln was taking actions that could provoke war. Obviously they hadn't gotten the message about who started the war.
The Official Records show that Union forces started reinforcing Fort Pickens on April 11. That was before the South fired on Fort Sumter. So, if Captain Adams was right, the North had already declared war on the South before the attack on Fort Sumter.
Sorry, that should have read March 5, the day after Lincoln's inauguration.
That was one possibility. The other was that the rebels wouldn't fire on the fort. That would prolong the stand-off situation, and perhaps make it likely that cooler heads would prevail and the situation would be resolved. And that would also have suited Lincoln.
The idea that Lincoln wanted or needed to crush the South in all-out war could well be a conclusion reached afterward, after an all-out war that did crush the South. At the time, on taking office, Lincoln still believed that there were abundant reserves of pro-Union feeling in the South that might eventually prevail in the Southern states if the country could weather the immediate crisis. Didn't Davis need a war more than Lincoln did -- so that support for secession and his new government didn't just dry up?
The notion that somehow a differential in tariffs would immediately enrich the CSA and impoverish the USA doesn't work for me. Financial journalists may talk like that, but the tariff's effects would take longer to materialize. If anybody was in a hurry it wasn't for that reason -- not if they were in full possession of their senses, anyway. Moreover, such arguments cut both ways. One might as well argue that Davis needed to strike before his enslaved labor force ran off.
That Providence Daily Post editorial is here. It's a little confused. They believed that secession came because Lincoln didn't support non-interference with slavery in the territories and the rebellion would end if only Lincoln would break his party's platform and cave in to Southern demands. That wasn't going to happen. As I read it they don't come out and directly say that Lincoln had some evil plan, but that he gave into the demands of the abolitionists who did.
If a paper doesn't even seriously consider the idea that the federal government should stand up to the secessionists or that free-soilers could legitimately stand firm on the exclusion of slavery from a territory, that paper would naturally view Lincoln's actions in the worst possible light. They agreed that the federal government had a right to the forts, but they thought a surrender on slavery extension and other concessions would bring the rebels back into the union.
It would take some time to go through the material you cite and untangle what was going on when and what agreements were made with whom and how. I'm also wondering how much of the "this is the beginning of the war" sentiment was a considered judgment on policy and how much was what soldiers and sailors inevitably think when large numbers of troops are massed or mobilized. It's hard to say, for example, how much of Captain Adams's comment relates to the actual situation with the rebels and how much relates to bureaucratic Army-Navy rivalry or to his own private feelings about secession. I'd want to know a little more.
If one believed that the federal government should take some kind of stand -- even a purely symbolic one -- against the rebellion and Buchanan's government had spinelessly renounced even the most theoretical and nominal dissent or resistance to the demands and actions, then obviously there would be a change in policy. Or do you believe that everything the rebels demanded or got was hard and fast and everything the union had held was subject to secessionist demands and assaults? And, as happens when one administration succeeds another, there was confusion and uncertainty. It might not have been clear just what was promised by home and with what degree of authority.
This also applied to the Confederate side as well, though. Davis was in a hurry -- even more than Lincoln. Asking why the Confederates didn't strike earlier when the federals were confused and disoriented ignores the fact that they were confused as well. They had no real army yet, and they -- as much as the Union -- needed a rallying point. Didn't Davis also -- seen from the immediate perspective of the time -- benefit from a war? Didn't he benefit from a rallying point that war would give him?
My point still stands, though: if you think someone is trying to trick or provoke you into war and you give them that war, should you really be complaining or reproaching? Was there another course of action you could pursue that would not result in your firing the first shots and being the one to blame for the war? If you see a massive fleet coming at you, you might fire on the fleet or wait for the other side to fire first, but if you reduce a fort to rubble and it turns out that there were in fact only a few meager ships sent to reinforce the fort, isn't it an evasion to say afterwards that you were tricked? Rather, admit that you tricked yourself into starting the war.
I see Lincoln as pursuing a strategy similar to that of Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis: stand firm, but don't start shooting (assuming that is what Kennedy was doing then: so much of what was said about that crisis turned out not to be true). Such "eyeball to eyeball" confrontation wasn't something his contemporaries would have been familiar with. Whether or not Davis could have trusted Lincoln, he would probably have been better off following a similar strategy and foregoing the first shot (at least in my opinion).
In fact, Lincoln did not know for certain what the Confederacy would do in response to his resupply mission to Fort Sumter.
What Lincoln did know was that he had to do something soon to prevent starvation and surrender of Sumter.
If Confederates allowed Lincoln's resupply mission, then status quo was maintained, and all Upper South and Border States remained in the Union.
And that was absolutely the preferred outcome, because it meant that over time the Deep South might be slowly persuaded to return to the Union fold.
Or, Congress might eventually decide to authorize secession, at which point Lincoln's responsibility in the matter was over.
But if the Confederacy chose an act of war to seize Fort Sumter, then war would begin because that's what the Confederacy wanted.
rustbucket: "He also succeeded or lucked into losing the battle of Fort Sumter, which meant that he didn't have to keep ferrying supplies to Sumter and defending the fort. "
There's no way to "succeed" in losing a battle, that's just ridiculous.
General Winfield Scott and others advised Lincoln it would take 20,000 US troops (an understatement) to hold Fort Sumter, at a time when the entire US Army was only 16,000 and most of them scattered in small units out west.
At the same time, the Confederacy had already called up 100,000 troops, so there was no possibility -- zero, zip nada -- that Lincoln could even fight, much less win, a battle for Fort Sumter.
What Lincoln could do, and did, was attempt to resupply Sumter, and in the process learn if the Confederacy intended to start war.
As it turned out, they did.
rustbucket: "Remember too that Lincoln had secretly pulled one of the key ships [Powhattan] from the Sumter expedition without alerting Fox and sent it to Fort Pickens.
The Sumter expedition was too small to succeed..."
Neither one extra ship, nor ten more, would have made any difference at Sumter -- Lincoln's ships were sent to resupply not invade.
They could not, and would not, fight their way in or out.
rustbucket quoting: "Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor." [Source: Providence Daily Post, April 13 1861].
Since Lincoln's actions were lawful and the Confederacy's a premeditated act of war, Lincoln did not "inaugurate" anything.
rustbucket: "Lincoln needed to (and did) keep Congress out of the way so he could take actions such as invading the South (Virginia, at least) that committed the country to war."
On April 15 Lincoln set the date for Congress' return as July 4.
Then, after Lincoln's action:
None of the subsequent Confederate actions -- after Lincoln's call on April 15 -- were known by Lincoln at the time.
rustbucket: "Given the natural patriotic feeling in the North generated by all of this, Congress would have no political will to oppose his actions."
Most Northerners, even Democrats, believed the Union should be preserved and its laws enforced -- yes, certainly, peacefully if possible, but if not, then by such means as proved necessary.
They did not need Lincoln to tell them that.
rustbucket after quoting Anderson: "Anderson was not the only one to recognize what Lincoln was doing would start a war.
Lincoln on April 5 gave a verbal order to reinforce Fort Pickens without telling the Confederates."
Lincoln ordered the Powhattan to Sumter, not Pickens.
Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor Pickens of the Sumter mission on April 6.
Jefferson Davis immediately ordered war to begin, a move endorsed by the Confederate cabinet on April 9.
rustbucket: "The Confederates had promised not to attack Fort Pickens if the Union did not reinforce it.
A violation of the truce could result in a shooting war."
All such demands by Confederates were acts of rebellion and/or war against the United States, period.
rustbucket after quoting various officials: "These three key guys recognized at the time that Lincoln was taking actions that could provoke war.
Obviously they hadn't gotten the message about who started the war."
There is no lawful way to demand the US government not protect, supply or reinforce its property and personnel.
Any such demands are illegal acts of rebellion and/or war.
The perpetrator was not the Union, but the Confederacy.
rustbucket: "The Official Records show that Union forces started reinforcing Fort Pickens on April 11.
That was before the South fired on Fort Sumter.
So, if Captain Adams was right, the North had already declared war on the South before the attack on Fort Sumter."
First, see my comment above.
Second, by April 9 Davis ordered and his cabinet confirmed war to begin at Fort Sumter.
Third, as it happened, the Powhattan's voyage to Fort Pickens was a mistake in communications, which Lincoln attempted unsuccessfully to correct.
So, if that was the Confederacy's excuse for war, it yet again demonstrates they were eager, itching and cruisin' for a bruisin'.