New Website on the American Civil War

[mikegriffith1]

If Lincoln was prepared to evacuate Fort Sumter in exchange for reinforcing Pickens, where is that recorded?

Quantrill

It's recorded in a number of sources, as Randall and Eisenschiml document.

Randall was fair and balanced toward the Confederacy. He even acknowledged that the Confederacy was moving toward emancipation in early 1865 and that this indicated the Confederacy may well have ended slavery even if it had survived the war.

The Radical Republicans were starting to suspect that Lincoln planned on allowing the Confederacy to continue by default, by not taking any action against it. The Radicals even voiced this suspicion on the Senate floor.

Jefferson Davis threw a monkey wrench into Lincoln's plan by foolishly cutting off the food supply to the Fort Sumter garrison. He then wrecked Lincoln's plan by firing on Fort Sumter, even though he had been assured that the federal naval convoy would only offload food as long as they were not fired upon. We know that Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, specified this in the operations order for the convoy: they were not to fire unless fired upon and were not to offload any weapons or ammo unless fired upon.

I swear, if Jefferson Davis wasn't on the Radicals' payroll, he should have been. The attack on Fort Sumter was a dream come true for the Radicals.

 

[gipper]

It's not a myth. I would invite you to compare any pro-Confederate analysis of the Fort Sumter incident with Randall's exhaustive 40-page analysis in Lincoln the President, Volume 1. I've read several pro-Confederate analyses of the Fort Sumter affair, including Jefferson Davis's labored one, and not one of them compares to Randall's analysis in its depth and balance of research.

I agree that the North should not have responded to the bloodless Sumter attack with a massive invasion, but there would have been nothing to respond to if Davis had not make the foolish, hot-heated decision to cut off the garrison's food supply and then had not made the catastrophic, idiotic decision to bombard the fort even though he knew the federal ships would only offload food as long as the convoy was not attacked.

Davis could not have done a worse job for the Confederacy in this matter than if he had been on the Radicals' payroll. His attack on Sumter played right into the Radicals' hands. It boggles the mind to imagine how Davis could not have known that he was giving the Radicals exactly what they wanted by attacking Sumter.

I agree the firing on Sumter was a stupid mistake. However this doesn’t change the fact that Lincoln was deceptively trying to position the South to fire the first shot. He obviously wanted war.

Had Abe wanted a peaceful resolution or compromise, he could have revoked the deceitful tariffs passed by Congress just before and after he became potus.

Had Dishonest Abe not lied about evacuation, the South never fires on Sumter. All other federal facilities throughout the South were peacefully transferred.

So, you can place all the blame on Davis, but this would be factually incorrect. Much of the blame for this horrible war rests with Dishonest Abe.

 

[Quantrill]

It's recorded in a number of sources, as Randall and Eisenschiml document.

Randall was fair and balanced toward the Confederacy. He even acknowledged that the Confederacy was moving toward emancipation in early 1865 and that this indicated the Confederacy may well have ended slavery even if it had survived the war.

The Radical Republicans were starting to suspect that Lincoln planned on allowing the Confederacy to continue by default, by not taking any action against it. The Radicals even voiced this suspicion on the Senate floor.

Jefferson Davis threw a monkey wrench into Lincoln's plan by foolishly cutting off the food supply to the Fort Sumter garrison. He then wrecked Lincoln's plan by firing on Fort Sumter, even though he had been assured that the federal naval convoy would only offload food as long as they were not fired upon. We know that Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, specified this in the operations order for the convoy: they were not to fire unless fired upon and were not to offload any weapons or ammo unless fired upon.

I swear, if Jefferson Davis wasn't on the Radicals' payroll, he should have been. The attack on Fort Sumter was a dream come true for the Radicals.

You say, because you believe Randall and Eisenschiml, that Lincoln was prepared to evacuate Fort Sumter in exchange for reinforcing Pickens. That is just a bold face lie. Lincoln never entertained the idea of evacuating Sumter or Pickens.

In Lincoln's first inaugural address: "The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government and to collect the duties and imposts: but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion." (The Annals Of America, Vol. 9, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2003, p. 252)

Lincoln made it clear that he would never let the Forts go. And even before the inauguration Lincoln, when he was President in waiting, he wrote to Frank Blair: "On the forts, Lincoln was no less clear, 'If the forts shall be given up before the inaugeration, he wrote to Frank Blair, an elder statesmen who had once been a part of Andrew Jackson's kitchen cabinet, the General must retake them afterwards'. He asked Washburne to assure Scott 'to be as well prepared as he can to either hold, or retake, the forts, as the case may require, at, and after the inaugeration'." (Days Of Defiance, Maury Klein, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1997, p. 137)

And, well on their way to the firing on Sumter, March 27, 1861, William Russel, famous reporter for the London Times, had opportunity to speak to Seward. "Russel asked about the rumors in the New York papers that Fort Sumter would be evacuated. 'That is a plain lie', Seward retorted. 'No such orders have been given. We will give up nothing we have--abandon nothing that has been entrusted to us'. If people would only read these statements by the light of the President's inaugural, they would not be deceived." (Klein, p. 350)

The problem was, Seward and Lincoln had been deceiving the Southern Commissioners that Sumter would be evacuated. Which is why there were rumors. But Lincoln never had any intent to let the forts go.

Why didn't Lincoln just send the message to Gov. Pickens and Anderson, that Anderson would evacuate the Fort? That's all he needed to do. He didn't even mention any evacuation.

Food would be supplied by the South for the soldiers at Sumter once they evacuated.

No need for any Navy force to be there at all. No need for any reinforcements.

And why was Lincoln sending a force to Fort Pickens to reinforce it, at the same time he was sending a force to Sumter? If, as you say, he was interested in any exchange of Pickens for Sumter?

And Jeff Davis did exactly what he should have. He waited patiently until the deception of Lincoln was fully exposed concerning Sumter. And with the Naval force on it's way to reinforce, gave Beauregard the authority to fire.

Quantrill

 

[mikegriffith1]

I agree the firing on Sumter was a stupid mistake. However this doesn’t change the fact that Lincoln was deceptively trying to position the South to fire the first shot. He obviously wanted war.

This is utter fiction. Lincoln was bending over backward to avoid war. Again, read Randall's 40-page chapter on Sumter. Lincoln was prepared to evacuate Sumter in exchange for reinforcing Pickens.

Had Abe wanted a peaceful resolution or compromise, he could have revoked the deceitful tariffs passed by Congress just before and after he became potus.

One, the tariffs weren't deceitful. Two, there was nothing he could do about the Morrill Tariff, which was passed and signed into law before he took office. The Morrill Tariff rates were lower than the 1820-1825 tariff rates and were the same as most of the Tariff of 1846 rates. Moreover, the Morrill Tariff included provisions that would help sectors of the Southern economy, unlike previous tariff bills.

Had Dishonest Abe not lied about evacuation, the South never fires on Sumter.

He did not lie about evacuation. Davis forced his hand by foolishly cutting off the Sumter garrison's food supply. Even then, Lincoln made it clear that the naval convoy would only offload food to the garrison as long as they were not fired upon, and we know these were the orders to the convoy.

If Davis had just allowed the garrison to receive food from the convoy, Lincoln could have continued with his plan to evacuate Sumter, but Davis's decision to fire on the fort discredited Northern moderates and gave the Radicals the perfect excuse to demand a full-scale invasion.

All other federal facilities throughout the South were peacefully transferred.

Uh, those facilities were seized at gunpoint. Most of them were seized by local or state forces before the Confederacy was formed. Davis should have ordered an immediate halt to any further seizures.

So, you can place all the blame on Davis, but this would be factually incorrect. Much of the blame for this horrible war rests with Dishonest Abe.

I don't place all the blame on Davis, but I fail to see how "much of the blame" falls on Lincoln, given the fact that Davis wrecked Lincoln's plan to give up Sumter in exchange for a meaningless, face-saving reinforcement of Pickens. If Davis had not cut off the Sumter garrison's food supply in the first place, Lincoln would not have come under intense pressure to send a resupply convoy. If Davis had not ordered the attack on Sumter but had let the food delivery go unopposed, the situation would have been defused and there would have been more time for Lincoln to carry out his plan.

For the life of me, I don't understand how Davis did not see that firing on Sumter was exactly what the Radicals were hoping he would do, and that destroying and seizing the fort would inflame Northern public opinion and discredit the Northern moderates.