Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

We are back in spring of 1861 in South Carolina, Fort Sumner. Now we left off last episode with Abraham Lincoln had just given his first inaugural in which he did try and talk about the bonds that unite the North and the South and maybe try and make one last ditch effort towards not going to war.

But the very next day, he gets a letter from Major Anderson, who is in charge of the fort, who is holed up there with about 80 troops and dwindling supplies.

And Major Anderson basically says, if you don't resupply us as soon as possible, we are going to have to abandon this fort.

And as Nikki pointed out in the last episode, that effectively means South Carolina can do whatever it wants.

So Lincoln has this fateful decision to make here to discuss it and discuss the

fallout of all that are, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley. Hello, Dan. Hello, Jody. Hey there. I'm trying to play up the attention here, but of course,

we know what Lincoln does. He decides to send a ship and resupply. But, you know, it is a real rock between a rock and a hard place

decision, not to downplay it. And he's trying, I mean, again, just like with the inaugural,

he's like, look, I don't want any trouble here. I'm going to send in this little boat,

perfectly fine, just a little boat coming in, bringing in some supplies. Don't worry about it. If you do worry about it, if you start shooting at this boat, then I am also going to send in reinforcements. And then we're going to have a problem. But if you just let this little boat go by, we're cool. So he tries to send a signal as many peaceful intentions as possible prior to sending in this resupply ship.

Aside from the fact that the fort needs to get resupplied, is there something on Lincoln's part here that is strategically forcing the South's hand, right?

Because I suppose there's a world in which you could respond to this situation and say, well,

for Soutner has dwindling supplies.

We've given up basically everything else.

Let's go on the offensive and get back some of those other forts in Charleston Harbor and retake it. But instead, he does this move that basically says, hey, we're sending this ship. Balls in your court about how you respond. Yeah. I mean, it feels a little, well, it's a little ballsy. I mean, it's definitely a gamble. But at the same time, I also think Lincoln is like, listen, I'm not going to be punked. So if you're going to, like, if you're going to do it, do it. But just know that like we are not going to tolerate you taking over South Carolina and acting as though you can move with impunity. That's what's not

going to happen. And in some ways, you know, Lincoln doesn't have much of a choice, but South

Carolina did. And South Carolina could have easily said, all right, we'll go another route or whatever,

or we'll find another way to go. And that's what I'm saying. You know, that's Lincoln. I think

that's the brilliance of Lincoln. He's framing the choices on South Carolina. Yeah. It's also like

basically what parents do with toddlers. Yeah. Yeah. Like we're going to give you a sense of agency.

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