A Straight Deal by Owen Wister

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln, nominee of the Republican party, which was opposed to the extension of slavery, was elected President of the United States. Forty-one days later, the legislature of South Carolina, determined to perpetuate slavery, met at Columbia, but, on account of a local epidemic, moved to Charleston. There, about noon, December 20th, it unanimously declared "that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved. " Soon other slave states followed this lead, and among them all, during those final months of Buchanan's presidency, preparedness went on, unchecked by the half-feeble, half-treacherous Federal Government. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, March 4, 1861, declared that he had no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it existed. To the seceded slave states he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. " This changed nothing in the slave states. It was not enough for them that slavery could keep on where it was. To spread it where it was not, had been their aim for a very long while.

The next day, March 5th, Lincoln had letters from Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. Major Anderson was besieged there by the batteries of secession, was being starved out, might hold on a month longer, needed help. Through staggering complications and embarrassments, which were presently to be outstaggered by worse ones, Lincoln by the end of March saw his path clear. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. " The clew to the path had been in those words from the first. The flag of the Union, the little island of loyalty amid the waters of secession, was covered by the Charleston batteries. "Batteries ready to open Wednesday or Thursday. What instructions? " Thus, on April 1st, General Beauregard, at Charleston, telegraphed to Jefferson Davis. They had all been hoping that Lincoln would give Fort Sumter to them and so save their having to take it. Not at all. The President of the United States was not going to give away property of the United States. Instead, the Governor of South Caro-lina received a polite message that an attempt would be made to supply Fort Sumter with food only, and that if this were not interfered with, no arms or ammunition should be sent there without further notice, or in case the fort were attacked. Lincoln was leaning backwards, you might say, in his patient effort to conciliate.