A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C White

Author:Ronald C White [White, Ronald C]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Patriot Bookshelf
ISBN: 9781588367754
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-11-06T06:00:00+00:00

LINCOLN WAS NOT PREPARED to deal with the crisis of Fort Sumter at the beginning of his presidency. He had determined in Springfield to preserve the Union without war, and he was aware of his inexperience in military matters. His previous method of dealing with crises, such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act or the Dred Scott decision, was to take months to research, think, and brood in private, before announcing his public response. But Anderson’s memorandum informed the War Department that there were only weeks to decide what to do.

Now Lincoln faced a far-reaching choice. He had to deal with the thorny problem of Fort Sumter on Charleston harbor in South Carolina, as well as Fort Pickens, constructed to fortify Pensacola, in the northern part of seceded Florida. The main show was Fort Sumter. Lincoln could surrender Fort Sumter and hope that this might keep the four states of the upper South and four border states from joining the secession, or he could attempt to resupply the forts and take the probable risk of starting a civil war. He asked Buchanan’s secretary of war Joseph Holt, a Unionist Kentuckian who had agreed to stay on while Lincoln waited for Simon Cameron to assume his duties, whether the Kentuckian Robert Anderson could be trusted. Holt said he could. Lincoln would find himself asking this question many times about government officials and military officers in the opening weeks of his administration. The new president needed time to think and to plan, but the clock was ticking.

In the following days, Lincoln conferred with cabinet secretaries and army and navy men about how to tackle the problem in the Charleston harbor. He listened respectfully as Secretary of State Seward argued strongly against resupplying Fort Sumter in order to preserve the peace. Welles, after several of these conferences, wrote of the president in his diary, “He was disinclined to hasty action, and wished time for the Administration to get in working order.”

On Saturday evening, March 9, 1861, when Lincoln reconvened his new cabinet, he invited General Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican War, to join the discussion. Scott, old and obese, had been studying Anderson’s dispatches. He urged, in the strongest terms, an evacuation of Fort Sumter. Everyone at the cabinet meeting, with the exception of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, agreed.

Despite the majority sentiment to withdraw, Lincoln decided to seek more information. Later, he wrote out three questions for General Scott. Lincoln convened another cabinet meeting on March 11, 1861, to share Scott’s answers. Scott advised that to undertake a mission to resupply Fort Sumter would take a fleet of war vessels, five thousand regular troops, plus twenty thousand volunteers. Lincoln read the sobering final sentence of Scott’s reply. “To raise, organize, & discipline such an army, would require new acts of Congress & from six to eight months.”

On the same day, Francis Blair, Sr., Montgomery Blair’s father, called upon Lincoln at the White House and told him “the surrender of Fort Sumter … was

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