When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office of President of the United States on March 4, 1861, those states were hardly united. Seven of them—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas— had voted to secede and formed the Confederate States of America. 

The status of the remaining slaves states was uncertain. Arkansas, Missouri, and Virginia all held votes for secession conventions, but voters choose more unionists than secessionists in each state. North Carolina and Tennessee voters defeated a motion to even hold a convention. Delaware’s legislature had voted not to join the Deep South; Kentucky and Maryland watched, rather than taking a position.  

The tipping point for those slave states would be whether Lincoln let the southern states “go in peace,” as some urged, or tried to preserve the Union. If preserving the Union meant trying to coerce the South—and no other method was likely—the other slave states could bolt. The Tennessee legislature made that threat explicit, declaring that its people will “resist [any] invasion of the soil of the South at any hazard and to the last extremity.”  

 Lincoln’s first test would be over two federal forts in Confederate waters.* They were Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, and Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor. 

Both had been sources of tension since January.  

On January 15, a delegation from Florida had gone to Pickens to demand that Lt. Adam Slemmer, commanding the Union garrison there, surrender the fort.** “I am here by authority of the President of the United States,” Slemmer answered, “and I do not recognize the authority of any governor to demand the surrender of United States property—a governor is nobody here.”  

In early February, the U.S.S. Brooklyn arrived off Fort Pickens with reinforcements. On the objections of Florida officials, the troops were not landed—though supplies were. The Brooklyn remained nearby, however.  

Reinforcements had also been sent to Fort Sumter; they met a more hostile reaction. On January 9, the Star of the West, an unarmed ship, entered Charleston Harbor to deliver supplies and 200 troops to Sumter. When South Carolina batteries opened fire, the ship turned and ran. Major Robert Anderson, in command at Sumter, considered firing to protect the ship but had no firm orders on the point. (In fact, he had not even been informed by the War Department that reinforcements were coming!) Not wishing the start of a civil war on his shoulders, Anderson held his fire, and the Star of the West steamed east before heading north.  

Lame-duck president James Buchanan did nothing to challenge what could easily have been called an act of war. March 4, to his mind, couldn’t come fast enough. 

As the weeks passed, Anderson sent a stream of messages back to Washington pointing out that supplies were running low. Meanwhile, the Confederates were building stronger fortifications all around his fort. One of his subordinates, Abner Doubleday, suggested leveling the Confederate positions before they got any stronger. Anderson demurred: he had finally received orders, and they were to act only on the defensive. 

Pressure, though, was building.   

By late February, South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens was trying to spur Confederate President Jefferson Davis to action: “Our honor and safety require that Fort Sumter should be in our possession at the very earliest moment.” On March 3, Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard took command of all Southern forces in Charleston. 

By the time Lincoln took office, Sumter had reached a crisis point. On the morning of March 5, his first official order of business was to receive Major Anderson’s latest message, which had arrived on Inauguration Day. Anderson said his garrison had just forty days of food left. Further, the Confederate positions were now so strong that any effort to resupply and reinforce the fort would need “twenty thousand good and disciplined men.” 

Alarmed, Lincoln asked General Winfield Scott, a hero of the Mexican War and the top commander of the U.S. Army what he recommended. “I see no alternative,” Scott said, “but a surrender, in some weeks.”  

In his Inaugural Address, just the day before, Lincoln had vowed to “hold, occupy and possess” the forts. What would he do now?  

His first instinct was to buy time. He ordered General Scott to study all aspects of the issue of resupplying and reinforcing Sumter. He also spent the next several days talking to top officials in his government and to his closest advisors to solicit their ideas.  

On March 11, Scott delivered his report, which repeated his earlier gloomy assessment. Supplying and reinforcing Sumter would require such a large number of warships and troops that eight months would be required to assemble and train them all. By which time, of course, the Sumter garrison would have been starved out. “As a practical military question,” Scott wrote, “the time for succoring Sumter . . . passed away nearly a month ago. Since then a surrender under assault or from starvation has been merely a question of time.” 

Lincoln remained unconvinced. While looking for a better answer, he told Scott that the troops on the Brooklyn should be landed at Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor. At least one fort would be reinforced.  When Lincoln discussed Scott’s analysis—and his misgivings about that course of action—with Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, Blair went into action. He summoned to Washington Gustavus Vasa Fox, a retired naval officer (and a Blair brother-in-law).

On the thirteenth, Fox described his plan to Lincoln: send two warships, a troop transport, and tug boats to Charleston, Fox urged. At night, under cover of darkness, use the tugboats to move the troops and supplies into the fort. Should the action be spotted and the Confederates begin to fire, the gunships and the fort itself could shoot back to protect the landing. 

Intrigued, Lincoln described the Fox plan to Cabinet members and asked them to consider it. On March 15, the Cabinet met and Lincoln solicited their views. Five of seven Cabinet members recommended surrendering the fort. One voted for reinforcing and resupplying the garrison if it could be done without provoking war. Only Blair urged action. 

Lincoln was unwilling to give up. He told Fox to go to Charleston, see the fort and the Confederate positions himself, meet with Major Anderson to review his plan, and report back. 

Meanwhile, Secretary of State William Seward—convinced that Lincoln would have to abandon the fort—had promised as much, through an intermediary, to three commissioners sent by the Confederate government to Washington to negotiate for recognition of Confederate independence. He fretted when Lincoln kept the Fox option alive. 

On March 25, Fox returned from Charleston. Anderson had said that Fox’s plan was impossible, but Fox was more convinced than before that it would work. And Lincoln had a bit more time. Anderson reported that he could pull back on his troops’ rations to make the food last longer. He could hold out until mid-April.  

Lincoln wrestled with the decision. He remembered his vow to hold the fort and he sympathized with Blair’s view that the right course of action was the one “which will inspire respect for the power of the Government and the firmness of those who administer it.” On the other hand, he did not want to be the aggressor. He had promised in the Inaugural Address that he would not start a civil war. He had put that burden squarely on the South:  “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.” 

How could he handle the Sumter crisis consistently with that position? 

An opponent to the idea of taking any action might have tipped the balance. General Winfield Scott sent the president a report on March 28. In it, he recommended the abandonment of both forts, Sumter and Pickens. Doing so, Scott said, would send reassuring signals to the remaining slave states and keep them in the Union.

Lincoln was appalled. That evening, after the first state dinner of his presidency, he called his Cabinet members into a room to discuss Scott’s memo. Most were outraged at the general’s clear meddling in political issues. 

After a long and mostly sleepless night, Lincoln arose on March 29 with his answer. He would send a relief expedition to Sumter, and he would tell the Confederates that he was doing so. He would inform them that only supplies would be landed for the benefit of the garrison—as long as the Confederates did not attack. If they opened fire, the fort and warships would fire as well, and troops would be landed in the fort to augment the garrison. 

The ball would be squarely in the Confederates’ court; war, if it happened, would be their responsibility.  

* Dozen of federal post offices, courts, forts, and other facilities and ships had been seized by state authorities or abandoned by federal officers, since South Carolina had first seceded in December. By March, these two forts and a couple of others off Florida were the only ones that remained in the U.S. government’s hands. 

** In one of those ironies that happens with such frequency in the Civil War, the man who led the Florida delegation demanding the surrender of Fort Pickens was William Chase—who had overseen the building of Pickens and had commanded the fort for some time.  

Words © 2011 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.