Why Did Lincoln order the attack on the Southerners.?

Question

when they had a perfect right to leave the Union.It was written in the agreement when they formed the Union that they could leave if they wished to later.

Answer 1

You'll get these answers from people claiming it was illegal for us to seceedde ask them to show you, the Supreme Court ruled then and now it was legal. However Lincoln did not order an attack. He proveked us. The most-likely hot-spot in which Lincoln could start his war was Charleston Harbor, where shots had already been fired in anger under the Buchanan administration. But the newly-elected governor of South Carolina, Francis Pickens, saw the danger--that Lincoln might, as an excuse, send a force of U.S. Navy warships to Charleston Harbor supposedly to bring food to Maj Anderson's Union force holed up in Fort Sumter. So Gov Pickens opened negotiations with Maj Anderson, and concluded a deal permitting Anderson to send boats safely to the market in Charleston once a week, where Anderson's men would be allowed to buy whatever victuals they wished.
(This arrangement remained in effect until a day or so before the U.S. Navy warships arrived at Charleston). Maj Anderson wrote privately to friends, saying that he hoped Lincoln would not use Fort Sumter as the excuse to start a war, by sending the U.S. Navy to resupply it.

Before his inauguration, Lincoln sent a secret message to Gen Winfield Scott, the U.S. general-in-chief, asking him to make preparations to relieve the Union forts in the South soon after Lincoln took office. Lincoln knew all along what he was going to do.

President Jefferson Davis sent peace commissioners to Washington to negotiate a treaty with the Lincoln administration. Lincoln refused to meet with them; and he refused to permit Secretary of State Seward to meet with them.

After Lincoln assumed the presidency, his principal generals recommended the immediate evacuation of Maj Anderson's men from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor--which was now located on foreign soil. To resupply it by force at this point would be a deliberate act-of-war against the C.S.A.

It turned out that Lincoln's postmaster general, Montgomery Blair, had a brother-in law, Gustavus V. Fox, who was a retired Navy-captain and wanted to get back into action. Fox had come up with a plan for resupplying Fort Sumter which would force the Confederates to fire the first shots--under circumstances which would make them take the blame for the war. Lincoln sent Fox down to Fort Sumter to talk with Maj Anderson about the plan; but Anderson wanted no part of it.

Lincoln had Fox pitch the plan to his Cabinet twice. The first time, the majority said that Fox's plan would start a war and were unenthusiastic about it. But the second time, the Cabinet members got Lincoln's pointed message, and capitulated.

Meanwhile, Congress got wind of the plan. Horrified, they called Gen Scott and others to testify about it; Scott and the other witnesses said they wanted no part of the move against the Confederacy in Charleston; and nor did Congress. Congress demanded from Lincoln--as was Congress's right--Fox's report on Maj Anderson's reaction to the plan. Lincoln flatly and unconstitutionally refused to hand it over to them.

Lincoln sent to Secretary Cameron (for transmittal to Secretary Welles) orders in his own handwriting (!) to make the warships Pocahantas and Pawnee and the armed-cutter Harriet Lane ready for sailing, along with the passenger ship Baltic--which would be used as a troop ship, and two ocean-going tugboats to aid the ships in traversing the tricky shallow harbor-entrance at Charleston. This naval force was to transport 500 extra Union-soldiers to reinforce Maj Anderson's approximately-86-man force at Fort Sumter--along with huge quantities of munitions, food, and other supplies.

The Confederacy would, of course, resist this invasion--in the process firing upon the U.S. flag. The unarmed tugs would, of necessity, enter the harbor first, whereupon they would likely be fired upon by the C.S.A., giving Lincoln the best-possible propaganda to feed to the Northern newspapers, which would then rally the North to his "cause."

Lincoln sent orders for the Union naval-force to time its sailing so as to enter Charleston Harbor on 11 or 12 April. Next, Lincoln sent a courier to deliver an ultimatum to Gov Pickens on 8 April, saying that Lincoln intended to resupply Fort Sumter peaceably or by force. There was no mistaking the intent of that message.

Lincoln had set the perfect trap. He had given President Davis just enough time to amass his forces and fire upon the U.S. Navy. But if Davis acquiesced instead, Lincoln need merely begin sending expeditionary forces to recapture all of the former Union-forts in the South now occupied by Confederate forces; sooner or later Davis would have to fight; and the more forts he allowed Lincoln to recapture in the interim, the weaker would be the military position of the C.S.A. As a practical matter, Davis was left with no choice.

Accordingly, the C.S.A., when informed that the U.S. Navy was en route, demanded that Maj Anderson surrender the fort forthwith. Anderson refused; Beauregard's artillery bombarded Fort Sumter into junk (miraculously without loss of life during the bombardment); and Anderson then surrendered with honor intact. The U.S. Navy arrived during the bombardment--but because elements of the force had been delayed for various reasons, did not join in the fight. The Navy was allowed to transport Anderson's men back to the U.S.

Thereafter Lincoln wrote to Fox, pronouncing the mission a great success. Lincoln ended his letter by saying, "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."

Folks, that ought to be plain enough for anybody to understand.

Now Lincoln had his excuse for a war (assuming that he continued to lie his head off about it--which he did); but there was still no reason for him to believe that Congress would declare war against the South on his say-so.
In fact, there was every indication that they would not. So instead of obeying the Constitution and calling Congress into emergency session and asking them to declare war and to call up an army (which only Congress could do, under the Constitution), Lincoln simply declared war and called up an army himself--by naming the C.S.A.'s defense of its sovereignty in Charleston Harbor an "insurrection" against the U.S. government.

Lincoln did not call Congress into session until several months later--when his war had progressed so far that Congress could not then call it off, but as a practical matter would have to rubberstamp it.

So Lincoln started the War of Northern Aggression virtually single-handed. When I answer I take my answers from the official records not our current history books as we know what they say, don’t we?

“Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy, that our youths will be taught by Northern school teachers; learn from Northern school books THEIR version of the war”. General Patrick Cleburne

God Bless You, Yours and Our Southern People.

Answer 2

This was a major reason for the war. The South claimed they had the right to leave the Union. The North didn't honor that. The Federal Government had the force behind it to keep the Union intact.

If the South had succeeded in leaving the Union peacefully, it probably would not have lasted. The North had the bulk of the resources and industrial complex. The South had the agriculture and very little else. It would have been a poor twin of the US and measuring only 1/4 of the total land area we have today.

By the way, Lincoln did not start the hostilities. When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, the war began. In effect, the South asked for the fight and the North gave it to them.

Answer 3

Right is one thing, and might is another. If the Confederates were allowed to secede, then the US would have to compete against an equal in the conquest of the West. By that time the US had no oposition on the American continent so it made no sense to allow any opposition to arise. Another reason was that Lincoln only managed to stop the secession of 3 states by extremely illegal means- meaning the loss of - at least - these 3 states at the next election.

Simply put, sooner or later there would have been a war. Therefore the sooner, the better, because the US had - at that time the whole of the Navy, all of the gun factories and a huge advantage in numbers. Given time the Confederates would have made their own Navy and gun foundries.
And - personal sympathies aside - Lincoln was right. Even with their primitive armament the Confederates almost beat the Federals. Given a few years, they would have beaten them for sure.

Answer 4

Actually early, it was Francis Pickens, and P.G.T. Beauregard, who ordered the attack on Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor. Why did these leaders in Charleston, S.C. attack first? On January 14, 1861 the Legislature in S.C. passed a resolution that claimed " Any attempt by the Federal government to reinforce Fort Sumter would be considered as an act of open hostility and as a declaration of war." Lincoln did NOT order an attack, Lincoln did NOT declare war. So where did that "open hostility" come from?

Answer 5

Lincoln did not attack the South. South Carolinians attacked Ft. Sumpter after Lincoln had assured them that he would not attack them, but would only reprovision the fort.

To quote from "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin:

P. 334-
The immediacy of this crisis [evacuation of Federal forces to Ft. Sumter where the South demanded surrender of the fort] posed great difficulties for Lincoln. His revised inaugural had no longer contained a promise to "reclaim" fallen properties [Federal arsonals, etc, taken over by the South], but Lincoln had most definitely pledged to "hold, occupy, and possess" all properties still in Federal hands. No symbol of Federal authority was more important than Fort Sumter. Ever since Major Anderson, in the dead of night on December 26, had surreptitiously moved his troops from Fort Moultrie to the better-protected Sumter, he had become a romanitc hero in the North. Surrender of his garrison would be humiliating. Still, the president felt bound by his vow to his "dissatisfied fellow countrymen" that the new "government would not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors."

It was the South Carolinians who opened fire on the fort. If they had not, in all liklihood Lincoln would have just kept provisioning the fort. As it was, he bungled orders, sending the gunboat Powhatan (that was to provide defensive cover for the reprovisioning ship if needed) both to Pensacola and Sumter--it went to Pensacola, so there was no gunboat to provide defensive cover for Fox's reprovisioning ship.

To quote again from the same source, p. 345:

When Gustavus Fox reached Charleston, he spent hours futilely searching for the Powhatan, ahving no clue the vessel had been misrouted. Nor did he know that Confederate authorities in Montgomery [then capitol of the Confederacy] had intercepted his plans and ordered the commander in Charleston, Brigadier General Pierre Beauregard, to attck the fort before the Powhatan and Union convoy were to arrive."

I would suggest you read this entire passage to get a better feel for what Lincoln and his cabinet did during this time. However history clearly shows that the South was the aggressor in this instance, and that Lincoln was trying his best to avoid conflict.