Today a career United States military officer accepts U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron’s offer of a commission as colonel of the First Cavalry. The officer’s name is Robert E. Lee. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had submitted the commission to the Senate on March 21, and the offer was formalized four days later. Even as…
Today U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, over the objection of some advisors, decides to attempt to resupply Fort Sumter on April 6. The die is cast. Lincoln knows that Confederate forces in Charleston will resist the resupply efforts, which in turn could well lead to the formal beginnings of the war that is inevitable. Meanwhile, Mississippi…
An editorial in today’s Charleston Mercury is read with approval by many white Baptists in the South Carolina city: … we have already noticed the gross ignorance of the people of the North in regard to the true principles of republican government. Having no adequate conception of those wise and needful restrictions upon absolute power,…