Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode

number 33 of our Civil War podcast. My name is Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the

podcast. In our last episode, Abraham Lincoln became president of the United States on March 4th,

1861 and inherited the secession crisis. The most sensitive and potentially explosive issue facing

Lincoln was the possession of federal properties within the seceded states. Before his inauguration,

as southern states withdrew from the union, they had demanded, in accordance with their newly

declared sovereignty and independence, the surrender of all federal installations inside them.

This included military posts, forts, arsenals, customs houses, and post offices.

In most cases, the local officials, many of them southerners, complied with the secessionist

demands. In a few spots, however, loyal U.S. Army officers refused to do so. One of those was

Lieutenant Adam J. Slimmer, the commanding officer at Fort Pickens, which guarded the entrance

to Pensacola Harbor in western Florida. Another officer who refused to surrender was Major Robert

Anderson, the commanding officer of Fort Sumter, located at the birthplace of secession,

Charleston, South Carolina. Lincoln's predecessor, President James Buchanan,

rejected demands for Sumter's surrender made by commissioners from South Carolina. Buchanan

instead dispatched an unarmed steamer, the star of the west, with provisions and reinforcements for

Anderson. When that ship was fired upon and driven off by South Carolina shore batteries on January

9, 1861, the lame duck president chose not to retaliate or regard the incident as an act of war.

Buchanan had denounced secession, but he claimed he had no power to stop slave states from

leaving the Union. Buchanan had put his hopes in Congress, asking for the adoption of yet another

great political compromise that would placate the South and prevent or limit secession.

But while both the Senate and House had appointed committees to study the feasibility of such a move,

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