Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address
As both Northerners and Southerners waited to see how
Lincoln would respond, he calmly announced in his first inaugural
address that he would do nothing. Rather, he reaffirmed the
North’s friendship with the South, stressed national unity, and
asked Southerners to abandon secession. Moreover, he declared that
the secession was illegal and that he would maintain the Union at
all costs—but that he would make no move against the South unless
provoked.
In announcing that he himself would take no action, Lincoln placed
the responsibility for any future violence squarely on the South’s
shoulders. He knew that Americans in the North would support a war
only in which the Southerners were the aggressors. Lincoln could
thus continue to claim honestly that he was fighting to defend and
save the Union from those who wished to tear it apart.
Fort Sumter
Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, announced
in his inaugural speech that the South might be required
to use force to secure its aims, and that spring, the South made
good on its word. On April 12, 1861, General P.
T. Beauregard ordered his South Carolinian militia unit to attack Fort
Sumter, a Union stronghold on an island in Charleston Harbor.
After a day of intense bombardment, Major Robert Anderson surrendered
the fort to Beauregard. South Carolina’s easy victory prompted
four more states—Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia—to
secede. The Civil War had begun.
Complacency in the South
The fall of Fort Sumter was not a major battle, militarily
speaking: the Union troops surrendered only because they ran out
of supplies, and neither side suffered any serious casualties. However,
the easy seizure of Fort Sumter inspired complacency in the South:
Southerners misinterpreted Anderson’s surrender as a sign that the
Union was weak and unwilling to fight.
Lincoln’s lack of immediate response was likewise misleading. The
North appeared to do nothing for months afterward—the next battle
wasn’t fought until July—and the South interpreted this inaction
as further weakness. In reality, Lincoln used the interim weeks to
ready the military and put the gears of the North’s war machine into
motion. The brutal war that followed turned out to be far different
from the smooth sailing the South initially expected.
