March 4, 1861: Lincoln's Inauguration

Until the 20th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1933, moving Inauguration Day to January 20, March 4 was Inauguration Day in the United States.  On Monday, March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the sixteenth president of the United States.  Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office.  Hannibal Hamlin was sworn in as vice president.

The outgoing president James Buchanan began the day with one final cabinet meeting.  Secretary of War Joseph Holt arrived late with a telegram from Major Robert Anderson in Charleston.  Anderson was now saying that without supplies he could not stay long at Fort Sumter.  The bad news would be waiting for Lincoln when the swearing-in ceremony was done.

In his inaugural address in Montgomery, Jefferson Davis had proclaimed that secession was legal and right.  In his inaugural address, Lincoln took the opposing view -- that secession was illegal and wrong.  The Union was unbroken, states were eternally in it, and he himself had just taken a solemn oath to defend it.

Therefore...

"The power confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts."

This, in a nutshell, would be Lincoln's policy, and, at the moment, it was all about Fort Sumter. Lincoln was operating under the assumption that Anderson could hold out there indefinitely, and Lincoln could "hold, oocupy, and possess" it simply by maintaining the status quo.  If war began, the South would have to start it.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government shall not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath in Heaven to destroy the government, while I have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend' it."

Only after the ceremony ended, when he arrived at the White House and found Anderson's message, would Lincoln realize that this assumption was wrong.  Lincoln would have to make the first overt action -- resupplying Fort Sumter -- and soon.

Also on this date, in Montgomery, Alabama, the "Stars and Bars," the first official flag of the Confederacy, was raised over the Confederate Capital for the first time.  The flag was designed by Nicola Marschall and consisted of two wide red bars with a white bar in between.  In the upper left corner was a blue field with seven white stars, one for each of the seceded states.  On the battlefield, the flag was often mistaken for the Union Stars and Stripes, so the Confederate Battle Flag, with St. Andrew's Cross, was adopted.

January 1, 1861: New Year's Day

 As the New Year of 1861 began, South Carolina had seceded from the Union and several Deep South states appeared ready to follow.  The only real questions were which state would be next and how many.  As the states seceded, the federal property in those states was quickly seized.  The Union would only contest the matter at Fort Sumter at Charleston harbor and Fort Pickens in Pensacola.  The situations were very similar, but Fort Sumter would be much more volatile, probably due to the difference in temperament between South Carolinians and Floridians.

"The New Year's reception at the White House looked very much the way New Year's receptions always looked.  There were flowers and gay music, with well-dressed people moving up to give President Buchanan a smile and a hand-shake, each one repeating the formal 'I wish you a happy New Year, Mister President'; and although the weather was bad, things seemed to be bright enough inside the mansion.  But neither the President nor his guests had any illusions about the happiness that 1861 was likely to bring to the people who occupied this building, and Mr. Buchanan looked tired and unhappy, as if he had had about all the strain he could take.  Mrs. Roger Pryor, wife of the fire-eating Congressman from Virginia, felt that 'a gloomy foreboding of impending disaster' oppressed everyone, and she reflected unhappily that the familiar social world of the capital was having the last of its old get-togethers.  So many people had already left for the far South, so many more would be leaving very soon:  no matter what happened, the group that met here on January 1, 1861, would never come together again."  -- Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury

December 8, 1860: Maintaining the Status Quo

On Saturday, December 8, 1860, most of South Carolina's Congressional delegation met with President James Buchanan.  They worked out an agreement to keep the federal military presence in the state as it was, that the garrison at Fort Moultrie in Charleston would be neither reinforced nor attacked.

The agreement was put in writing the next day in a letter from the South Carolina Congressmen to Buchanan:

"In compliance with our statement to you yesterday, we now express to you our strong convictions that neither the constituted authorities nor any body of the people of the State of South Carolina will either attack or molest the U.S. Forts in the harbor of Charleston previously to the action of the convention, and we hope & believe not until an offer has been made through an accredited Representative to negotiate for an amicable arrangement of all matters between the State and the Federal government, provided that no reinforcements shall be sent into these Forts & their relative military status remains as at present."