What if Lincoln would allowed South Carolina to take fort summer in 1861

04/12/2011

On this date, a century and a half ago, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, on an island off the coast of South Carolina. The Confederate States of America asserted not only their right to secede but also to claim federal property within their borders. The newly inaugurated U. S. president, Abraham Lincoln, rejected both claims and refused to evacuate Sumter.

"Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy," Lincoln had said in his somber inaugural address a month earlier. "A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left."

The Civil War, to Lincoln, was never technically a "war" but an illegal and unconstitutional rebellion and a fight to put down the rebellion. The details of the events leading to the firing on Fort Sumter have much to do with this attitude and with his total rejection of the possibility of secession.

By attempting to resupply Sumter, Lincoln succeeded in forcing the Confederacy to fire the first shots. Lincoln had to accept the loss of Sumter soon after. But he was successful, so to speak, in forcing the other side to start the shooting. Lincoln believed that justified the military actions that he subsequently ordered to put down the rebellion.