Total rubbish.
Even the postal service was still functioning more-or-less normally.
PeaRidge: "Before he took office, New York was making plans to secede."
Complete hogwash, though many New Yorkers, then as now, were Democrats with natural sympathies for their Southern Democrat brethren.
PeaRidge: "When the Confederacy announced its much lower tariff rates, governors and businessmen clamored for war."
Wrong again.
Instead, Northern demands for Federal action against those uppity slave-holders rose or fell with each new Confederate outrage -- seizing Union forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc. -- or rumored prospect for peace.
PeaRidge: "Lincoln accommodated them by invading Charleston and Pensacola."
Yet more nonsense.
Lincoln "invaded" nothing, any more that the US "invades" Cuba by sending our ships, supplies and reinforcements to US forces at the US base, Guantanamo, Cuba.
Just as President Buchanan had in January, Lincoln merely attempted to resupply Union forces at Forts Sumter & Pickens.
The Confederates' military assault on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, was a clear act of war against the United States, equivalent to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1942.
The Confederacy soon formalized their rebellion by declaring war on the United States (May 6, 1861) and sending military aid to pro-Confederates in Union Missouri.
The fool said, “Before he took office, New York was making plans to secede.” but in the real world it was just a crack-pot scheme by Mayor Wood and a few cronies. He thought he could create an island nation within a nation by expropriating the tariffs that the Port of New York collected.
No serious person took him or his scheme serious.
By that does he mean by no one, by only a few. No newspapers? No people with influence?
He was wrong.
Shortly after secession, in New York City, Richard Lathers, President of the Great Western Insurance Company, James T. Soutter, G.B. second-in-command at the Bank of the Republic, Augustus Schell, Collector of the New York Port, William B. Astor, son of John Jacob Astor; and thirteen other men sent a circular letter to several hundred prominent New Yorkers, calling a meeting for the 15th of December to be held in the offices of the Great Western Insurance Company at 33 Pine Street.
This was apparently not the only Pine Street meeting of the day, but perhaps a cover for a more important one.
The New York Herald reported on December 15, 1860, a plan for the removal of New York City from the Union:
“A secret meeting of its promoters is to be held today. The object is in the event of a secession of the Southern states, to throw off the yoke of the Western part of the state, and make New York a free city.”
Then you said “total rubbish” to my comment:
“The government was on the verge of collapse when Lincoln took office, and most of the northern apologists posting here know it.”
It has been reported by multiple sources that just hours before Lincoln sent Federal warships to Charleston and Pensacola, that when asked why not let the seceding states alone, his comment was “ but what about the tariff?”
Why would the greatest president in history be concerned with a little thing like a tariff?
Just found this letter from Major Anderson.
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…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.
Major Anderson himself realizes that what Lincoln is doing is a lying backstab on a agreement/truce/understanding. He realizes that what Lincoln was doing was a deliberate act of war and he says so.
He also basically says it was a real chickensh*t thing to do.