Lincoln's little war

the long version

"What was Abraham Lincoln's role in initiating the costliest war in American history? In piecing together the events that led to the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Webb Garrison considers whether the secession of the southern states was inevitable and war unavoidable. Garrison's interpretation of the actions of the Lincoln administration suggest that the president manipulated the drama in Charleston to create a no-win scenario for the South -- a great psychological victory for him, but one with dire consequences for the rest of the country. Lincoln may have anticipated a war between the states, but Garrison claims that he provoked it, believing the war would be a brief conflict, a kind of police action similar to George Washington's handling of the Whiskey Rebellion. When that assumption proved wrong, the Northern president qualified his actions in ways that absolved him of responsibility, crediting all that followed to fate. In these pages Lincoln appears as a man of contrasts, whose passion to preserve the Union blinded him to any possibility for compromise. Garrison also describes the many personalities involved in the Sumter crisis and evaluates the decision making that led the country into civil war"--Page 4 of cover.