Lincoln and the First Shot

Encapsulating the important political and military issues on the eve of the Civil War! Lincoln had hoped to realize his firm determination to preserve the Union through peaceful and non-provocative measures. However, he was willing to accept war if he could avoid the blame for having started it. As events turned out, he was no more the aggressor than was Jefferson Davis. In these pages, Current retraces step by step the influences and events that shaped Lincoln’s controversial April policy, beginning with the new president’s rather furtive arrival in Washington and concluding with the mobilization for war. The Sumter question, as the author points out, “reflects and in turn casts light upon the national tradition of avoiding the ‘first shot.’ It concerns the events that led directly to the Civil War, the greatest of wars from the American point of view. And it involves problems of historical evidence and interpretation that have more fascination than even the best of ordinary puzzles.”