In his first inaugural, Lincoln had already nakedly threatened the South with war if the seceded states held to their secession. And then Lincoln took effective steps to make sure war came.
A lot of Northerners were not fooled, including Senator Orville Browning (who apparently approved) and a number of Northern editorialists, such as The New York Evening Day-Book:
We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South…. We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding…. Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it.Many people are justly reconsidering Lincoln's presidency and concluding that he alone initiated what a hundred years later Arthur Schlesinger would call "The Imperial Presidency." His hands are stained with the blood of three-quarter million Americans, and yet for some reason we consider him one of the top three or four presidents.
Read "Ft. Sumter: The First Act of Aggression"
And remember, Abe Lincoln was a racist bigot
Posts
