And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. In preparing his inaugural address, he made use of several of the most beloved speeches in American history at the time. According to Meacham, Lincoln understood that he had earned a minority of the votes in the general election (recall there were four important general election candidates) and wanted to show the public that he wanted to be a president for all, not just the Republican constituency. Lincoln sought to appear as a friend and comrade to those in the South, not an adversary.

The next morning, during his first day in office as president of the United States, the crisis at Fort Sumter began. Fort Sumter was a Union fort on an island outside Charleston, South Carolina, the seceded state. The officers there were short of critical supplies. The Union army would have to provide them this aid, but South Carolina wanted the surrender of the fort. Many in Lincoln’s inner circle in Washington urged that he abandon the fort to the South because of the catastrophic consequences that might unfold if he did not do so. Lincoln disagreed and opted to supply it. This helped precipitate the Civil War, and, reports Meacham, on “April 12, 1861, the first shots were fired on Sumter from Confederate batteries” (237).