Why did they have to attack the fort? They could have not, tactically. It wasn't being used in any effective way to blockade the harbor, and the North was obviously in no position to invadethe south and get anywhere.
On March 29, 1861 the Secretaries of War and the Navy were ordered to co-operate in preparing a relief expedition to move by sea on April 6. Governer Pickens of South Carolina was notified that an attempt would be made to supply Fort Sumter "
with provisions only," and not with arms, and was advised by Lincoln that "if such an attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, or [
sic] in case of an attack upon the fort."
To Northern opinion such a relief expedition would seem innocent enough - bringing food to hungry men. But to the Confederacy it posed a double threat: force would be used
if the attempt to provision the fort were resisted; and should it not be resisted, an indefinite occupation by Union forces could be expected, which would weaken the Confederate cause at home and sap its prestige abroad, where diplomatic recognition was so precious. Lincoln had now taken the burden of the dilemma from his own shoulders and forced it upon the Southerners. Now they must either attack the fort and accept the onus of striking the first blow, or face an indefinite and enervating occupation of Sumter by Anderson's soldiers. Could any supposedly sovereign government permit a foreign power to hold a fort dominating the trade of one of its few great harbors? As Professor James G. Randall has observed, the logic of secession demanded that the Confederates take the fort or that the Union abandon it.
Major Anderson refused a demand for prompt evacuation. Knowing that the Union relief fleet was approaching, the Confederates on the morning of April 12 began firing upon Sumter, and thus convicted themselves by an act of aggression. They had not only broken the Union, they had attacked it; and the reception of he deed at the North was everything that Lincoln could wish.
Lincoln's secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, observe in their monumental biography:
Abstractly it was enough that the Government was in the right. But to make the issue sure, he [Lincoln] determined that in addition the rebellion should be put in the wrong. . . . When he finally gave the order that the fleet should sail he was master of the situation . . . master if the rebels hesitated or repented, because they would thereby forfeit their prestige with the South; master if they persisted, for he would then command a united North.
Nicolay, in his
Outbreak of Rebellion, asserted his belief that it was Lincoln's carefully matured purpose to focre rebellion to put itself flagrantly and fatally in the wrong by attacking Fort Sumter. But there is even more intimate evidence of Lincoln's intention. On July 3 the newly appointed Senator from Illinois, Orville Browning (chosen to replace Douglas, who had just died), called upon Lincoln and held a conversation with him. Fortunately Browning kept a diary, and his entry for that evening reads:
He [Lincoln] told me that the very first thing placed in his hands after his inauguration was a letter from Majr. Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter. That he called the cabinet together and consulted Genl Scott - that Scott concurred with Anderson, and the cabinet, with the exception of P M Genl Blair were for evacuating the Fort, and all the troubles and anxieties of his life had not equalled those which intervened between this time and the fall of Sumter. He himself conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce [,] giving notice of the fact to Gov Pickens of S. C. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter - it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could.
If we may trust Browning, who was one of Lincoln's friends, it was the Confederate attack and not the military success of the expedition that mattered most. In a letter to Gustavus Vasa Fox, the extraordinary naval officer who had led the relief attempt, Lincoln concluded, "You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result."
This realistic bit of statecraft provides no reason for disparaging Lincoln, certainly not by those who hold that it was his legal and moral duty to defend the integrity of the Union by the most effective means at his command. The Confederate attack made it possible to picture the war as a defensive one; for some time it unified Northern sentiment.
The American Political Tradition
Hofstadter, Richard
pp. 120-122
