3/27/1861 The Cincinnati Enquirer as reported in the Memphis Daily Appeal of March 27, 1861:
"The New York and all Eastern Republicans are getting clamorous for an extra session. They now admit that, critical and extraordinary as the condition of the country is, the President is without power to take any effectual step toward its relief. He can effect no fixed and decisive policy toward the seceding States, because no laws give him authority to carry it into effect."
"He cannot enforce the laws, because no power has been put at his command for that purpose. He cannot close the ports which refuse to pay Federal duties, nor has he the authority to enforce payment except through the local authorities.
"These, moreover, are the least of the difficulties which embarrass the action of the Government. This loan is called for, but there is no prospect of revenue to render it safe.(The loan referred to was called by the Treasury Secretary to pay the monthly bills of the government.) The seceded States invite imports under the tariff of 1857, at least ten per cent. lower than that which the Federal Government has just adopted.
"As a matter of course, foreign trade will seek southern ports, because it will be driven there by the Morrill tariff. It has been stated that Secretary Chase has been heard to say that the tariff bill must be repealed.
The birthing of the Civil War (or rather, 'War of Northern Aggression') seems to expose the notion of Lincoln knowingly executing an end-around on behalf of his industrialist overlords with which to circumvent the Constitution. Fort Sumter lit a fuse that Lincoln and his fellow totalitarians *knew* would give them the opportunity to claim "SEE?? THEY STARTED IT!!"
Interestingly enough, The Posse Comitatus Act -- enacted in 1878 -- was a response to and subsequent prohibition of the military occupation of the former Confederate States by the United States Army during the ten years of the so-called Reconstruction (1867–1877) following the CW. (Yes -- the American SOUTH was a nation-within-a-nation that was OCCUPIED and its assets plundered.)
As has been reinforced (DiogenesLamp has painstakingly illustrated and demonstrated the case), economic reasons and insider monkey-business was THE driving force of the CW. "Freeing the slaves" was merely the public mask, aided by a willing, compensated media, lending the much needed moral reason for the amazingly amount of bloodshed, rape of the South, and raw abuse of unconstitutional federal power.
Which is exactly how normal governments respond to such matters in normal times of peace.
This Cincinnati newspaper edition did not call for war and neither did President Lincoln.