[quote]Jack_Dempsey wrote:
“You know that the cow joke is a little stale by the 15th page. It was not for the loss of a cow that the war was started, but it clearly was the threat of re-provisioning Ft Sumter that caused rebels to fire. So I turn the same question on you: why why why did the rebels–not yet a legitimate government of any type–choose to fire on Federal forces so fast. For the sake of honor, somehow just then discovered?”" - DrSkeptix
Jefferson Davis was under extreme pressure to do something. Louis Wigfall and several other Southern politicians of the fire-eating sort wanted an attack on Sumter to prompt Virginia and other upper-South states to join the Confederacy. Roger Pryor, pissed off at lingering unionism in Virginia, told South Carolina: “If you want us to join you, strike a blow!”
“The shedding of blood will serve to change many voters in the hesitating states, from submission or procrastinating ranks, to the zealous for immediate secession.” Edmund Ruffin[/quote]
[…and thanks, Jack_D.,for elaborating]
Ah, yes, he who has yet to be named, that other Jefferson, Mr. Davis.
Let’s snap the time line forward to January 1865. Lincoln called on Preston Blair, a personal friend of Davis, to initiate peace feelers. Lincoln in fact arranged safe conduct through the lines to Davis in Richmond. Blair, on his own initiative, re-proposed a plan (initially from Stanton four years earlier) to put the the war on hold and confront the French forces in Mexico (!). In any case, Davis agreed to send Peace Commisioners to Washington “with a view to secure pece to the two countries.” (sic)
On hearing this particular turn of phrase, Lincoln recalled Stanton, then in transit to Virginia for consultation, and, at personal risk, sailed himself to Hampton Roads on January 29 to meet with Confederate VP Alexander Stephens and two others (including John Campbell). Stephens opened with the Blair proposal, but Lincoln made it very clear that Blair had proposed this on his own, and reaffirmed that , “…The restoration of the Union is a sine qua non with me.” When Campbell raised the question of how the restoration of union was to take place, it was affirmed that Lincoln would not–and could not --rescind the Emancipation Proclamation; a constitutional amendment had passed outlawing slavery throughout the Union. However, Lincoln indicated that he thought the North would be willing “to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for their slaves” to as as much as “Four Hundred Millions of Dollars.” But Lincoln did not abandon the singular principle that the Union was to remain intact. The compromise was on the table.
Of course, Davis rejected this and the Hampton Roads conference collapsed without further productive talks. (Nevertheless, Lincoln drafted a proposal for Congress to appropriate that $400 million, provided the “resistance to national authority” would end by April 1–note please, the choice of words. Pardons would follow once resistance had ended.)
Davis response to the Hampton Roads conference was bellicose; he pledged eternal resistance, and demanded that the war continue.
Now the reader may remember that pushharder insisted that the South was on its knees in September 1864, and that taking Atlanta, and Sherman’s march to sea was completely unnecessary since the war was already won. And here, a month after Savannah was taken, Davis was intransigent, and quite willing to see the killing go on.
Can we now forget the notion that it was in Lincoln’s power to negotiate with Davis an end before September 1864? Or before January 1863, when the South was still convinced it could “win” the war?
No. As I have shown, Lincoln did not “hurry” into the war; he was confronted with it as a fact and as a threat. He had made overtures to stop it in an honorable fashion, even as the South was truly incapacitated in January 1865, but it was the intransigence of Slave Power which demanded both secession and its slaves, that sent men to gory graves.
It should be clear by now that the bullets and Dustin’s “big balls” did not fly in only one direction, and that honor did not segregate only to slaveholders.
(Game and match.)