Fire on Fort Sumter
As moderate as Lincoln tried to be in his policies, there was no fence-sitting when Confederate rebels fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina in April 1861. He had to act swiftly. Fort Sumter, which lay at the entrance to the Charleston harbor, remained under the command of Major Robert Anderson and a small detachment of federal troops. It was by far the most important of the four forts remaining under Union control.
Who was the “little lady who started the Civil War?
” Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American writer and abolitionist who wrote a powerful novel — Uncle Tom's Cabin — that precipitated the Civil War as it strengthened the antislavery movement. Legend has it that when President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said, “So you're the little lady who started the Civil War.”
Reluctantly, because he feared igniting war, President Lincoln sent supplies to reinforce Fort Sumter, but the Confederates blocked the harbor. With orders from President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy, General Beauregard demanded that the Union surrender the fort. When Major Anderson ignored the ultimatum, Confederate fire erupted on April 12, 1861, and Anderson had little choice but to surrender.
Abraham Lincoln called on local militia in the Union states to suppress any uprisings against federal territory or laws. In essence, the Civil War had begun, and the Union rallied around its new president. A lesser man or leader might have yielded to the insurrection, but Lincoln upheld what he believed were his duties under the oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution and the country, with the powers vested in him to mobilize militia and blockade Confederate ports.
