[Ditto]

A foreign vessle has no right to patrol the harbor of another nation without it's consent, both then and now. Thus the Harriet Lane was an aggressor when it fired.

The Harriet Lane was patrolling American waters, and not one nation in the world disputed that fact then nor in the years afterward. Not one nation in the world recognized the Confederacy, then or ever.

[Non-Sequitur]

I believe it was James Petigru who said that South Carolina was too small to be a country and too large to be an insane asylum. I think he was wrong on the second part.