From Waiting Game to War

A month of anxious waiting came to an end in early April 1861 when Lincoln’s decision to send a relief expedition to Fort Sumter shattered an uneasy peace between the Union and the Confederacy and precipitated war and the last phase of secession. Just after delivering his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, in which he denounced secession as anarchy and pledged to hold federal properties as yet unseized in the South but not to initiate hostilities against the seceded states, Lincoln learned from Major Anderson that Fort Sumter would run out of supplies in about forty days. Whether to resupply the fort or order its evacuation was the defining issue of his first month in office. Against the advice of Republican conservatives led by William H. Seward, who were convinced that Southerners would voluntarily choose to reenter the Union in a matter of months if Lincoln refrained from any act that could touch off a war, Lincoln finally ordered a relief expedition but stipulated that no troops or ammunition would be sent in unless the Confederacy fired upon the expedition or the fort. On the orders of Jefferson Davis, Confederate artillery opened fire on the morning of April 12. On learning of the fort’s surrender, Lincoln called on all the states for militia troops to put down what he defined as a rebellion. Southerners viewed his troop call as a declaration of war to invade their homeland and end slavery. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina in the Upper South quickly seceded, but the border slave states, a key to future Union offensive operations, held firm in the Union.