The Stogie–Donald Debates: Debunking Abraham Lincoln's Fort Sumter 'Plot'

Stogie attacked me at the comments of my earlier post, "Abraham Lincoln 'Plotted' to 'Force the South' to Fire the First Shot at Fort Sumter?":

Donald, instead of insulting me, why don't you actually read a book or two? Yes, Lincoln deliberately provoked the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. He planned it, he plotted it. This is proved by historical research and reference to original documents, like . Read "Lincoln and Fort Sumter" by Charles Ramsdell, the Southern Historical Association, 1937. It is now in the public domain. Lincoln admitted his pleasure at the South firing the first shot, in a letter to a Captain Fox. He wrote:"You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result." [starting the war]. The result was that thousands of angry Northerners joined the army, falsely believing that the South's attack on the fort was unjustified.

And my response:

Who's insulting whom, Stogie? Obviously I read books all the time. It's simply that any countervailing evidence cannot penetrate the tinfoil redoubt you've built up to defend this so-called Southern heritage. Why is the Klan campaigning to keep the Confederate flag up in Columbia? Doesn't that bother you to have the KKK for an ally?

Less belligerently, as readers of course know, I read books all the time. It's pretty much what I do when I'm not blogging, besides eating, sleeping, watching news and sports, and hanging out with my family. I've got until the end of August to lollygag around until the fall semester starts.

So, I'm reading all kinds of things, like I always do.

Perhaps Stogie might check out Richard Nelson Current's, Lincoln and the First Shot, a history of the roughly two-month period leading to the outbreak of hostilities at Fort Sumter. In his afterword, Current reviews the evidence that Lincoln "plotted" to force the South to fire the first shot, and he follows that discussion with more recent scholarship that debunks the memes of the Southern heritage partisans by citing the works of historians James Randall, David Potter, and Kenneth Stamp. I've photographed the key sections. As the summary of Professor Randall indicates, "Lincoln intended and expected a peaceful provisioning of the fort."

You can read the full passage below. Clearly, partisans will adopt their favored views, but Stogie is delusional if he thinks that Lincoln "plotted" to force the South to strike first. Indeed, Stogie's ravings are right in line with the feverish rants of Marxists and radical libertarians, positions that are way outside mainstream and authoritative interpretations of the origins of the Civil War.

And by the way, Stogie has yet to respond to the announcement that the Ku Klux Klan will march to support the Confederate flag in Columbia, South Carolina. Clearly, those KKK ghouls haven't gotten the "innocent Sorth" memo.