This quote about the tariff is from C R Vaughan, DD, Editor, Discussions by Robert Dabney, DD, LLD, Volume IV, Hamsburg VA Sprinkle Publications, 1979, pp 87-100 quoting the memoirs of Col John B Baldwin, a member of the VA Peace Commission.
You just can't help yourself can you?
FLT-bird: ***”This quote about the tariff is from C R Vaughan, DD, Editor, Discussions by Robert Dabney, DD, LLD, Volume IV, Hamsburg VA Sprinkle Publications, 1979, pp 87-100 quoting the memoirs of Col John B Baldwin, a member of the VA Peace Commission.”***
The problem with Baldwin’s story is that he didn’t tell it until war’s end at which time Confederates were furiously destroying their own documents and concocting revisions to explain away what they did.
So historians discount it and Baldwin’s suggestion that Lincoln was concerned about losing not just miniscule revenues from Charleston, but all $50+ million annual Federal revenues.
None of the accounts I’ve read include reports from either Baldwin or those Maryland folks who visited Lincoln with similar results.
Instead they emphasize what the record shows: Lincoln’s concern to hold Fort Sumter, even if it meant military conflict because to do otherwise would be to lose the Union.
Lincoln was determined not to start war, but also not to shy away if it came.
Or you could read Dabney's document itself, or is that too much like work?
MEMOIR OF A NARRATIVE RECEIVED OF COLONEL JOHN B. BALDWIN
You just can't help yourself can you?
I tried, I really did. But one can only put up with so much falsehoods before responding.