Slouching Towards Fort Sumter? › American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson
In the months before the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter, there were lots of sharp divisions in the North about the proper reaction to the first seven Confederate states that had already left the Union.
Not all Unionists believed that war was inevitable. Some, in fact, were happy to be done with the departing South and thus see their stain of slavery gone from the Union. Similarly, others agreed that the emerging Confederacy was not worth the trouble and costs of war, and the secessionists could just form their own nation and stew in their own backward, servile juice.
But after Fort Sumter, Lincoln—who was hated as much by the Confederates as Trump is by the woke and socialist left—gained a consensus that the Constitution had no clauses about any lawful departure from the union. But it did operate under a clear supremacy clause that made state obstruction of federal law and occupation of federal property veritable sedition.
Lincoln and the preservationists felt that they easily had the moral high ground of abolition versus the continuance of slavery. Nor did they want a North America of fragmenting, warring nations in the manner of Europe.
Something similar is emerging over Minnesota, the South Carolina of our age.
more
https://amgreatness.com/2026/01/29/slouching-towards-fort-sumter/
