Who Started the War?
The standard textbook answer to this question is that the South obviously started the war because it “fired the first shot” by attacking Fort Sumter, which was located in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Most textbooks don’t mention several facts that put the attack in proper perspective. For example, after the Fort Sumter incident, the Confederacy continued to express its desire for peaceful relations with the North. Not a single federal soldier was killed in the attack. The Confederates allowed the federal troops at the fort to return to the North in peace after they surrendered. South Carolina and then the Confederacy offered to pay compensation for the fort. Lincoln later admitted he deliberately provoked the attack so he could use it as justification for an invasion. The Confederates only attacked the fort after they learned that Lincoln had sent an armed naval convoy to resupply the federal garrison at the fort. The sending of the convoy violated the repeated promises of Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, that the fort would be evacuated. Seward continued to promise the Confederacy that the fort would be evacuated even after he knew that Lincoln had decided to send the convoy. Major John Anderson, the Union officer who commanded the federal garrison at the fort, opposed the sending of the convoy, because he felt it would violate the assurances that the fort would be evacuated, because he knew it would be viewed as a hostile act, and because he did not want war. Several weeks before the Fort Sumter incident, Lincoln virtually declared war on the South in his inaugural address, even though he knew the Confederacy wanted peaceful relations.
In his inaugural speech, given weeks before the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln threatened to invade the seceded states if they didn’t continue to pay federal “duties and imposts” (the tariff) and/or if they didn’t allow the federal government to occupy and maintain all federal installations within their borders. Imagine what the American colonists would have thought if the British had said to them, “We want peace. But, we’re going to invade you if you don’t keep paying our tariff and/or if you don’t allow us to occupy and maintain all British installations within your borders.” The colonists would have rightly regarded this as a virtual declaration of war. Of course, in effect, the British did say this to the colonies. This was the same position that Lincoln presented to the Confederate states weeks before the Fort Sumter attack. Furthermore, five months earlier, some Republicans in Congress publicly swore “by everything in the heavens above and the earth beneath” that they would convert the seceded states “into a wilderness” (James McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, New York: Ballantine Books, 1988, p. 251).
Jefferson Davis argued that the attack on Fort Sumter was an act of self-defense:
"The attempt to represent us as the aggressors in the conflict which ensued is as unfounded as the complaint made by the wolf against the lamb in the familiar fable. He who makes the assault is not necessarily he that strikes the first blow or fires the first gun. To have awaited further strengthening of their position by land and naval forces, with hostile purpose now declared, for the sake of having them “fire the first gun” would have been as unwise as it would be to hesitate to strike down the arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at one’s breast, until he has actually fired." After the assault was made by the hostile descent of the fleet, the reduction of Fort Sumter was a measure of defense rendered absolutely and immediately necessary. (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Peter Smith Edition, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1971, reprint of original edition, p. 154, original emphasis)
Davis had a valid point. The naval convoy that Lincoln sent to Fort Sumter was no innocent “relief” flotilla. It included warships and over one thousand troops. It was being sent to Charleston against the wishes of South Carolina and the Confederacy, and in violation of the repeated high-level assurances that the fort would be evacuated. Any country on earth would view the sending of an unwanted armed naval convoy into one of its major ports as an act of aggression. The Confederates were well aware that Lincoln had already threatened to invade the Confederate states if they did not in effect give up their independence, and that some congressional Republicans had already sworn to turn the Deep South states “into a wilderness.” When all the facts are considered, the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter can be viewed as a justified defensive reaction to the impending arrival of an unwanted naval force.
If Lincoln had desired peace, he knew all he had to do was evacuate Fort Sumter, as his own secretary of state had been promising would be done for weeks. When the Confederate authorities were told the fort was going to be evacuated, Confederate forces stopped building up the defenses around the harbor and celebrated. Across the harbor, Major Anderson was grateful the fort would be evacuated and that therefore North and South would separate peacefully:
Confidently, he [Seward] told Supreme Court Justice John Campbell that Sumter was to be evacuated in three days. Campbell relayed this to the commissioners [the Confederate peace commissioners] and they promptly informed President Davis. The news of Anderson’s imminent departure was believed in the South. Troops stopped work on the Charleston batteries and fired salutes in celebration. The major [Major Anderson] too assumed it was true and thanked God that “the separation which has been inevitable for months, will be consummated without the shedding of one droop of blood.” Since war was thus avoided he hoped that the departed states “may at some future time be won back by conciliation and justice.” (Cisco, Taking A Stand, pp. 105-106)
But, sadly, Lincoln didn’t pursue peace with the Confederacy. For a while it seemed as though he was prepared to evacuate Fort Sumter, in spite of his earlier statements to the contrary. Initially all but two of his cabinet members urged evacuation, as did his general-in-chief, General Winfield Scott. However, Radical Republicans and influential Northern business interests applied intense pressure on Lincoln and on his cabinet not to evacuate the fort. Radicals in the Senate threatened impeachment if the fort were evacuated (Catton and Catton, Two Roads to Sumter, p. 277). Once the low Confederate tariff was announced, powerful Northern business interests came out strongly opposed to peace with the Confederacy, and Lincoln’s cabinet quickly reversed its position evacuation. As the pressure for aggression mounted, Lincoln decided to provoke an attack on the fort in order to use the attack as a pretext for invasion and to whip up a majority of the Northern public into a war frenzy against the South. Some Northerners saw through Lincoln’s ploy. But in the heat of the moment many Northerners were fooled by it, while others were already so anti-Southern that they didn’t care. A number of Northern newspapers opined that Lincoln had provoked the attack in order to use it as an excuse to wage war on the South. Lincoln himself later admitted in two letters that he provoked the attack for that purpose (Francis Butler Simkins, A History of the South, Third Edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963, pp. 213, 215-216; J. G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1960, p. 174).
So there you have it. No altruistic reasons. No regard for preserving the union. It was indutrialist profits and greed, plain and simple. Lincoln created him a war so the fatcat New England industrialists would get off his back. Some hero. More like the spineless coward he really was.
