I recall hearing a professor at the college where I worked state that Lincoln had gunboats going up and down some rivers, coasts, etc… shelling “Confederate” positions before Ft. Sumter, and that this was what led to Ft. Sumter being attacked- because the South was quite fed up by this time, and they saw this as being as good a time as any to start the fireworks.
Is there any proof of this?
Thanks,
hh
I am not a historian and you can take what I say with a grain of salt. What I was told was that Lincoln went to some effort to avoid provocation. That he warned the south that he was going to resupply Fort Sumter, but that there would be no belligerence on the part of the union soldiers. But the southern hotheads decided they couldn’t allow this resupply and attacked.
What I cannot tell you is the tenor of the times. Maybe Lincoln knew that this resupply would be considered an act of war. I guess if you read 100 histories you would get 200 views.
Living as I have in Quebec for the last 3/8 of a century, I have often wondered how separation would go. Presumably the gov’t of a sovereign Quebec would politely (or otherwise) ask the Canadian gov’t to vacate the army bases and the Federal gov’t would refuse. Then the bases would need food and fuel for the winter and the Feds would airlift supplies. Now what? Well, Fort Sumter must have been something like that.
And Lincoln made no military attacks on any Confederate soils. The Confederates themselves were proud to have fired the first shot in the war and honored the person who did it. (It may not have been technically the first, but Ft. Sumter meant the war began in earnest.)
Firing on Fort Sumter of course was a dumb mistake by South Carolina.---------Gave that anal retentive dingbat Lincoln just what he needed to invade the South.
Fort Sumter was of course just symbolic. Bloodless conflict.
No, it’s completely incorrect.
Well, that depends on how amicable separation would be, but given Canadian political culture, I would assume that it wouldn’t get to this. I believe the Quebec and Canadian governments would agree on some schedule for vacating the military bases, and this schedule could very well go a few years in the future. My understanding of the American Civil War is that the two sides were going to go to war with each other sooner or later, with the federal government refusing to recognize separation and the Confederates intent on pursuing it to the end. So the war was going to start, on any issue.
Said person would be Edmund Ruffin, according to contemporary accounts (of admittedly questionable veracity).
Sailboat
Absolutely false. Tempers were running high enough in South Carolina that even the act of resupplying Ft. Sumter’s small garrison with rations was regarded as intolerable by the Confederate “fire eaters.” Lincoln, still learning on the job and being given very contradictory advice by his Cabinet, was determined to maintain control of Federal facilities below the Mason-Dixon Line. He kept the governor of S.C. apprised of his intentions, and the rebel batteries fired upon the resupply ship (the Star of the West, IIRC), driving it off, before opening fire on Ft. Sumter on April 12, 1861.
Of course it suited Lincoln’s political purposes that the Confederates begin the war - the North was outraged and men rallied to the colors all across the country - but the rebels in Charleston harbor were only too glad to oblige.
Yes, The Star of the West. It is worth noting that the US Navy ship Powatan, the most powerful in the fleet was sent down to Sumpter, but the orders were confused and she sailed to Fort Donaldson (?) in Florida instead. Had she arrived to back up the supply ship we could have said Lincoln provoked the rebels. In the event he did not.
(Where the heck would the tiny US Navy get a bunch of gunboats anyway?)
Remember, too, that Lincoln was still working to keep Virginia in the Union (it didn’t secede until after Ft. Sumter). Attacking any of the Confederate states would have immediately put Virginia solidly in their camp.
As it was, Virginia seceded due to Sumter, as did three other states. But Lincoln would have much preferred keeping it in the Union (if, for nothing else than the fact that Robert E. Lee had indicated he’s fight for whatever side his home state was on).
And he did keep Kentucky from seceding, which would have been disastrous.
That’d make an interesting what-if.
I don’t think we could say it even then. Ft. Sumter was a federal facility, and even granting any claim of offshore islands it would be quite needlessly aggressive to shoot at federal soldiers.
And what would they shoot at? Cornfields?
Two Fort Sumter events are being confused in this thread: the Star of the West resupply effort, which took place while Buchanan was President, and the April 1861 resupply which was forestalled by the Confederate capture of the fort.
The Star of the West was in some ways the more aggressive attempt. The Star herself was a chartered merchantman, but had been stocked with food, ammunition, and troop reenforcements. She was to land backed by a single warship, the Brooklyn, which however was separated from the Star en route.
Cadets from the Citadel fired on the Star on the night of January 9-10, 1861, causing damage but no casualties. With Brooklyn unavailable to help, and with Anderson (having received no instructions, and very uncertain about what to do) declining to offer supporting fire from Fort Sumter itself, the Star chose to turn around and leave.
In April 1861, Lincoln sent another merchantman, the Baltic, backed by three warships (it would have been four but for the Powhatan mishap mentioned by Paul in Saudi). He notified the Governor of South Carolina that this attempt would supply only food, not arms or reenforcements.
Nevertheless, the Confederates could not allow this, and before the fleet arrived (it was delayed by a gale outside the harbor) they opened fire on and captured the fort.
The confused Powatan ended up at Fort Pickens, in Florida. Not Fort Donaldson, in the midwest. That came to me last night in my sleep. Funny how the mind works, and when.
I believe you mean Fort Donelson, the hastily erected works on the Cumberland River in northern Tennessee which surrendered to US Grant in February 1862.
To add to the confusion, the Governor of South Carolina, Francis Pickens, shared his name with Fort Pickens in Florida. Maybe that was why the Powhatan got lost–they sent it down to hassle Pickens, but they meant the Governor, not the Fort! 
Having studied the allegations that Lincoln provoked the attack on Fort Sumter, I’d have to say that much of it was a result of miscommunication. Lincoln was a pragmatist. While he thought that slavery was wrong, he made it clear that he had no desire to abolish slavery in areas where it was practiced to avoid alienating Southerners.
After his election, the media in the states that would become the Confederacy painted him as a tyrant out to take their slaves, while the Northern media presented his moderate pragmatism on the issue as a sign of cowardice. The fears that the Southern media cooked up helped to promote the appeal of Southern secession, which we know they did. However, Lincoln made it clear in his first Inaugural Address that he did not recognize the Confederacy’s complete independence and said that while they could “secede,” they would be provided no services from Washington D.C. However, he also said that the Union would retain control over Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens as a symbol of Union dominance.
Essentially, the fears that the Southern press cooked up were what would provoke the attack on Fort Sumter. Not long after Lincoln’s inauguration, he sent steamboats down to the two forts to reinforce them with supplies such as food and clothes. While this move did not create an issue at Fort Pickens, the paranoia that the Southern press cooked up about Lincoln really affected the area of Fort Sumter and provoked the attack on it, ushering in the Civil War.
Through this lens, I would say that it was the Southern press, not Lincoln, who provoked the attack on Fort Sumter.
That Lincoln provoked the South into starting the war isn’t true, but it’s useful to hear. Afterward you can safely ignore anything else the utterer has to say on the subject.
This is how I’ve understood it. What Lincoln really wanted to avoid was that the Feds should fire the first shot, but as shrewd a politician as he was, he must have understood that the attempt to resupply Sumter would be taken as a provocation under the circumstances. It was, enabling the Union to take military action from the higher moral ground of the first party to suffer an assault.
Here’s a link to an NPR story from last year, including some discussion of the Sumter incident. The link takes you to a textual transcript, but you can also listen to the audio if you prefer.
I’m not Hari but I think you’re misinterpreting what he said. Lincoln wasn’t trying to maneuver the Confederacy into firing the first shot. He was hoping to avoid a war altogether. He still hoped a peaceful reunification could be negotiated. And if that wasn’t possible, he at least wanted to secure the allegiance of the border states before any war started.