Rockrr is fond of listing all sorts of examples where Southern forces took over formerly Union installations and assets, but he/she never seems to notice that none of these were deemed sufficient to provoke a war.
Charleston was the primary port through which all European trade would flow. The reason it was a sticking point, is because *THAT* port represented the dire financial threat to the North. They simply could not allow regular and profitable trade with Europe to develop.
I do not think you are adequately counting the costs that allowing competing European trade (at low tariff rates) would have had on the economic conditions in New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
Like a dog returning to its vomit DegenerateLamp is returning to its tired strawman.
Confederates seized dozens of major properties -- US forts, ships, arsenals & mints -- and countless minor: US customs houses, light houses, etc.
Individually each seizure was a provocation for war, then, just as such behavior would be today.
But President Buchanan did nothing in response.
But the Confederate military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter was a different category -- like Pearl Harbor, or like a potential Communist Cuban military assault on Guantanamo, Fort Sumter was an act of war, and it did provoke an appropriate response from the new US President, Lincoln.
DiogenesLamp: "Charleston was the primary port through which all European trade would flow.
The reason it was a sticking point, is because *THAT* port represented the dire financial threat to the North.
They simply could not allow regular and profitable trade with Europe to develop."
Your suggestion that fear of Charleston replacing Northern cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston or Baltimore as the "primary port" for European trade is beyond far-fetched.
Had it, in fact, been the number one concern, we would see that expressed far more frequently in, not just anti-Republican newspapers like the New York Herald, but also in pro-Republican papers, and yet we don't.
Further, the reason Fort Sumter was defended, as opposed to many others which were not, is that US troops long stationed in Charleston occupied the fort and remained waiting instructions from Washington.
Washington sent them no new instructions, but did attempt twice -- in January and again in April -- to resupply them.
Confederates fired on the January resupply ship and used the April mission as their excuse to launch a full scale military assault of Union troops there.