CHAPTER 1

Secession

On December 20, 1860, just 42 days after the election of Abraham Lincoln, SouthCarolina seceded from the United States. In the following months 10 more stateswould follow suit, eventually forming the Confederate States of America. Then,on April 12, 1861, Confederate forces under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, a formercommandant at West Point, launched an attack on the Union soldiers at FortSumter, an artificial island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, precipitatingthe Civil War. These two events seem, in retrospect, to follow one fromthe other. But did they?

Historians have long debated whether widespread secession and war were,in the long view, inevitable. There can be little doubt that Lincoln's electionguaranteed that at least several slaveholding states would secede. Though Lincolnthe candidate took pains to emphasize that he would not move againstslavery where it already existed, and as president-elect remained studiouslysilent on the question, many Southerners believed that the man from Illinoisand his new and newly empowered Republican Party would move aggressivelyto limit slavery's expansion, isolating the South and putting the institution ona short road to extinction.

But secession was not an immediate, sudden step for every state. Thoughsix states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas—hadjoined South Carolina by the end of January 1861, the final four—Virginia,Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee—did not leave the Union until afterthe war began. Four more slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky andMissouri—remained in the Union. In reality, secession was a fractious, drawn-outprocess in most places, with degrees of pro-Union sentiment pushing backagainst secession advocates. In some parts of the Confederacy, primarily theAppalachian Mountain regions of Virginia and Tennessee, Unionist sentimentremained a force throughout the war, generating significant guerrilla activity.Western Virginia undertook a "reverse" secession as a result of the WheelingConventions of May and June 1861, leading to the creation of the loyal state ofWest Virginia.

Though a war was not inevitable, Lincoln did everything he could to igniteone. He understood that the Union would be hobbled without the South'sresources; more importantly, he understood that a successful secession over apolitical dispute would fatally undermine the core premise of American democracyas a system for working out political differences. And if the Union were tobe re-formed, it had to happen quickly; should the South win diplomatic recognition,it would be nearly impossible to force it to rejoin without completelydefeating it in battle. While that is precisely what it took to end secession, Lincolnwas probably still correct in his calculation: allowing the South to gaindiplomatic recognition might well have meant fighting not just Richmond, butLondon and even Paris as well.

It is harder to determine just how eager the Confederacy was for war. Certainly,many of its military and political leaders were keen to fight. But otherscautioned against rushing into conflict, recognizing how ill prepared the newcountry was for a drawn-out war. Fatally, the South did not have the deliberativepolitical structure, let alone the vibrant public sphere, to allow for sucha discussion. Put simply, the same hotheads who pulled the South out of theUnion were then able to dictate the speed with which it went to war. Ratherthan negotiate a deal over the Union installations on Confederate soil still heldby Northern forces—most notably Fort Sumter—the Confederacy simply occupiedthem, or demanded their surrender. It was precisely the pretext that Lincolnwas looking for to begin a fight, and he soon found it, in Charleston Harbor.

The Last Ordinary Day

By ADAM GOODHEART

Nov. 1, 1860

Seven score and 10 years ago, a little Pennsylvania town drowsedin the waning light of an Indian summer. Almost nothing hadhappened lately that the two local newspapers found worthyof more than a cursory mention. The fall harvest was in; grain pricesheld steady. A new ice cream parlor had opened in the Eagle Hotel onChambersburg Street. Eight citizens had recently been married; eightothers had died. It was an ordinary day in Gettysburg.

It was an ordinary day in America: one of the last such days for avery long time to come.

In dusty San Antonio, Colonel Robert E. Lee of the U.S. Army hadjust submitted a long report to Washington about recent skirmishesagainst marauding Comanches and Mexican banditti. In Louisiana,William Tecumseh Sherman was in the midst of a tedious week interviewingteenage applicants to the military academy where he servedas superintendent. In Galena, Ill., passers-by might have seen a manin a shabby military greatcoat and slouch hat trudging to work thatThursday morning, as he did every weekday. He was Ulysses Grant,a middle-aged shop clerk in his family's leather-goods store.

Even the most talked-about man in America was, in a certainsense, almost invisible—or at least inaudible.

On Nov. 1, less than a week before Election Day, citizens ofSpringfield, Ill., were invited to view a new portrait of Abraham Lincoln,just completed by a visiting artist and hung in the statehouse'ssenate chamber. The likeness was said to be uncanny, but it was easyenough for viewers to reach their own conclusions, since the sittercould also be inspected in person in his office just across the hall.Politically, however, Lincoln was almost as inscrutable as the paintedcanvas. In keeping with longstanding tradition, he did not campaignat all that autumn; did not so much as deliver a single speech or granta single interview to the press.

Instead, Lincoln held court each day in his borrowed statehouseoffice, behind a desk piled high with gifts and souvenirs that supportershad sent him—including countless wooden knicknacks carvedfrom bits and pieces of fence rails he had supposedly split in hisyouth. He shook hands with visitors, told funny stories and answeredmail. Only one modest public statement from him appeared in theIllinois State Journal that morning: a small front-page ad, sandwichedbetween those for a dentist and a saddle-maker, offering...