Lincoln’s Uncertain Decision: Fort Sumter, 1861

The hardest decision of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency revolved around the Confederate garrison stationed at Fort Sumter.

On March 5, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, only president for a day, had to make a decision on what to do. Lincoln had a divided cabinet, a divided party, and a divided country. Half of his cabinet wanted war with the newly-formed Confederacy. The other half, led by William Seward, wanted peace.

In his inaugural address, Lincoln attempted to clarify his position regarding Fort Sumter and other federal property in the seceding states. Because the constitution attempted “to form a more perfect union,” it follows, Lincoln argued, that the possibility that a state, on its own, could secede would render the constitution less perfect. “I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken” and “that the laws of the Union [will] be faithfully executed in all the States.”  Lincoln considered this a “simple duty” that should “not be regarded as a menace” but as an obvious and stated purpose of the Union as expressed in the constitution. “In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority,” Lincoln continued. “The power confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using force against, or among the people anywhere.” Should a particular place prove utterly hostile to any federal presence in a region, Lincoln promised to forgo any federal presence there for the time being. However, Lincoln argued, “the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy” and will lead either to chaos or despotism.[1]

Lincoln had always been clear and public about his Union, Whig, and Republican views. If anything, he softened them for his inaugural address. While in Leavenworth, Kansas, just prior to the 1860 election, Lincoln had spoken in much more strident terms.

“So, if constitutionally we elect a president, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown was dealt with,” he said, masterfully, if not very subtly, turning the Brown fears back onto the South. “We can only do our duty,” he concluded.[2]

A few months later, in January, 1861, Lincoln said that he “would suffer death before I will consent, or will advise my friends to consent, to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege of taking possession of this Government, to which we have a constitutional right.”

Should any of the proposals then being circulated for compromise be acted upon, “I should regard any concession in the face of menace the destruction of the Government itself, and a consent on all hands that our system shall be brought down to a level with the existing disorganized state of affairs in Mexico.”[3]

A month later, in February, 1861, Lincoln rhetorically asked an audience in Indianapolis about the meanings of “coercion” and “invasion,” words thrown around indiscriminately in the South. His answer, though long, is worth repeating here in full.

The words ‘coercion” and “invasion” are much used in these days; and often with some temper and hot blood. Let us make sure, if we can, that we do not misunderstand the meaning of those who use them. Let us get exact definitions of these words, not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves, who certainly depreciate the things they would represent by the use of words. What, then, is “Coercion?” What is “invasion?” Would the marching of an army into South Carolina, without the consent of her people, and with hostile intent towards them, be “invasion?” I certainly think it would; and it would be “coercion” also, if the South Carolinians were forced to submit. But if the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all these things be “invasion” or “coercion?” Do our professed lovers of the Union, but who spitefully resolves that they will resists coercion and invasion, understand that such things as these on the part of the United States, would be coercion or invasion of a State? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their affection would seem exceedingly thing and airy. If sick, the little pills of the homoeopathists would be much too large for it to swallow. In their view, the Union, as a family relation, would seem to be no regular marriage, but a sort of “free love” arrangement to be maintained only on “passional attraction.”[4]

In the John Brown reference and the “free love” reference, Lincoln was brilliantly—if somewhat callously—answering the Southerners with their own fears, as he had done in Kansas.

In New York, in February, 1861, Lincoln stated that as president “I shall then take the ground that I think is right—the ground that I shall then think right for the North, the South, the East, the West, and the whole country.”[5] Days later, in New Jersey, Lincoln promised to possess “no malice toward any section.” Further, “the man does not live who is more devoted to peace than I am. None who would do more to preserve it; but it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly.”[6]

But, with his inauguration as president, the reality became something more than the rhetoric. Indeed, the reality of the siege in Charleston Harbor hit Lincoln hard the moment he finished his inaugural address.

Buchanan, no longer president, said to Lincoln, “if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”[7]

One of the first things he saw as president was “a letter from Major Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter.”[8] To be sure, from the very beginning of Lincoln’s administration, the civil war defined his presidency.

More to the point, Lincoln inherited Buchanan’s policies. Lincoln told a friend in the summer of 1861 that the events which transpired in Charleston Harbor between March 4 and April 12, 1861, would not equal “all the troubles and anxieties of his life” up to that point.[9] His Secretary of the Navy took this even further. “No question that presented itself during the four eventful years of his administration gave President Lincoln greater annoyance and embarrassment than the difficult one relating to Fort Sumter and its garrison,” Secretary Welles claimed.[10]

Normal demands on the first few months of a president—long before a permanent civil service. “From 6 o’clock in the morning until long after midnight” the president “permits himself to be made the passive victim of the thousands who would readily sacrifice his life and the safety of the nation to their own selfish eagerness for office.”[11]

Winfield Scott reported: “When Major Anderson first threw himself into Fort Sumter it would have been easy to reinforce him,” Scott wrote on March 5. “Fort Moultrie has since been re-armed and greatly strengthened, and many powerful new land batteries (besides rafts) have been constructed; hulks sunk in the principal channel, etc. etc.,” the venerable general continued. He agreed with Anderson’s latest assessment.  “The difficulty of reinforcing has now been increased 10 or 15 fold.”[12]

Even Lincoln admitted that maybe evacuation was the only proper course. This Lincoln said, in a closed and private cabinet meeting.

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Notes:

[1]Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, in William E. Gienapp, ed., This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 89-97.

[2]Quoted in Stampp, And the War Came, 6.

[3]“Mr. Lincoln’s Position,” Harper’s Weekly (February 9, 1861).

[4]“General Political Intelligence,” New York Times (February 16, 1861), pg. 2.

[5]“Mr. Lincoln’s Speech to the Republican Clubs,” Harper’s Weekly (February 23, 1861).

[6]“His Speech in Trenton,” Harper’s Weekly (February 23, 1861).

[7]Quoted in Klein, Days of Defiance, pg. 315.

[8]Diary of Orville Browning, pg. 476.

[9]Diary of Orville Browning, pg. 476.

[10]Mordell, ed., Selected Essays of Gideon Welles, 36.

[11]“National Affairs,” New York Times (March 16, 1861), 1.

[12]Winfield Scott to Abraham Lincoln, March 5, 1861, in Mearns, ed., The Lincoln Papers, vol. 2, 464-465.  See also, Mordell, ed., Selected Essays by Gideon Welles, 42.

The featured image is “An image of Fort Sumter before the 12-13 April 1861 battle from the direction of Fort Johnson.” It is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.