Chapter 4 The Shock of War: “This Most Wicked and Wanton Rebellion”

Abstract

Lincoln and Bryant had misjudged the strength of the secession movement. Contrary to their benign predictions that the storm of succession would pass, the Union was unraveling inexorably. By Inauguration Day, it was clear that the states of the Lower South comprising the new Confederacy would not return to the Republic peacefully. Jefferson Davis warned that the North would soon “smell southern gunpowder and feel southern steel.” At the same time, the eight remaining slave states in the Upper South were wavering in their loyalties, while factions in Congress frantically deliberated but rejected a host of increasingly farfetched plans for compromise. The implacable truth was that the USA and the Confederate States of America were hurtling toward civil war.