Denson finds the answer by appealing to a well-known fact. Most people, despite their aversion for war, are not pacifists. If they have been attacked, they will fight back; and, once battle is joined, matters usually get out of hand. This gives the political leaders their opportunity. They have only to provoke an enemy into an attack. By doing so, they will be able to rally their nation to "defend" against an assault they have themselves instigated. In one prime example of this tactic, Secretary of War Henry Stimson noted in his diary for November 25, 1941, "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves" (p. 101). Denson discusses in detail two instances of this phenomenon: Abraham Lincoln's attempt, knowing that this would induce an attack, to provision Fort Sumter, and Franklin Roosevelt's aggressive policy toward Japan, which led to the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. Denson also considers in less detail Woodrow Wilson's similar tactics toward Germany in World War I.
The key to Lincoln's policy toward the states that had seceded may be found in a passage of his First Inaugural, delivered on March 4, 1861. Here he said that he would not initiate force against the departed states, even though in his view they had acted illegally in seceding. His seemingly conciliatory policy was belied by a qualification. He said that he would not use force, except to the extent necessary to collect the duties and imposts.
The power confided in me [Lincoln] will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. (p. 47, emphasis omitted)
The government of the United States depended at that time for its revenue principally on tariffs. These operated to the disadvantage of the South, a largely agricultural area, which had to pay high prices for imports. Tariffs redistributed wealth from the South to the North.
Another development which began to divide the North and South was that the political power of the North allowed it to keep a vast majority of the tariff revenue and use it for "internal improvements," such as building harbors and canals, which was, in effect, a corporate welfare program. (p. 38)
Northern interests added to Southern misery by using the tariff explicitly for industrial protection, culminating in the Morrill Tariff, passed by the Senate in February 1861, after a number of states had already seceded, and avidly promoted by Lincoln. (For an outstanding account of the crucial role of tariffs in secession, in addition to the sources cited by Denson, see Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War [2004]).
By seceding, the South threatened this entire system. By instituting a free-trade zone — or at least by drastically undercutting Northern tariffs — the South could divert the bulk of international trade to Southern ports; Northern business would be struck a severe blow and the federal government compelled to seek an alternative system of revenue. Lincoln, a firm believer in tariffs, was determined to prevent this from happening. Hence his insistence that the duties and imposts would be collected.
The message was not lost on the South. They at once recognized Lincoln's aggressive intentions in the Inaugural. Additionally, he refused to receive the Confederate commissioners sent to negotiate such matters as the sale of federal property in the states that had seceded. With this background, it is small wonder that both the South Carolina Governor and Confederate President Jefferson Davis demanded that Fort Sumter be surrendered. The only plausible purpose for the federal government to retain the fort would be to ensure that federal tariffs were collected on goods entering the port of Charleston, and this the Confederacy could on no account allow if its independence were to be preserved.
Precisely this state of affairs gave Lincoln his opportunity. He, along with most members of his Cabinet, at first contemplated surrender of the fort, as its defense was militarily next to impossible. Further reflection led Lincoln to change his mind. Secretary of State Seward had led the Southern authorities to believe that Lincoln would surrender the fort, but the president now prevaricated. He now said that he would send provisions to the fort, not arms.
Why did he do so? Denson follows a famous article by Charles W. Ramsdell, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," Journal of Southern History (1937) (pp. 47, 60).
Lincoln, in this view, deliberately used his knowledge that the South could not tolerate a federal fort on a permanent basis to induce the South to attack it. If the fort were attacked when Lincoln was ostensibly only supplying it with provisions, Northern opinion could be swayed to support an all-out attack on the "disloyal" states. They would be guilty of an assault on federal property: was it not then justifiable to repel those who had dared to fire on the American flag? In fact, provisions had been shut off only because the Confederate authorities got wind of Lincoln's devious intentions. Had Lincoln seriously wished a peaceful resolution, the matter could have been readily resolved.
The thesis may at first strike one as extreme, but substantial evidence exists to support it. By no means does the case rest on mere inference about Lincoln's intentions. His onetime Illinois colleague, Senator Orville Browning, said that Lincoln explicitly told him that he intended to provoke an incident over Fort Sumter. Browning met with Lincoln on the evening of July 3, 1861, and his diary for that date contains this entry:
He himself [Lincoln] conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce, giving notice of the fact to Governor Pickens of S.C. [South Carolina]. The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter — it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could. (p. 83, emphasis omitted)
Denson's argument, and that of other Lincoln revisionists such as Thomas DiLorenzo, should not be misunderstood. He does not contend that the policy of Jefferson Davis was beyond reproach. Perhaps Davis ought not to have fallen into Lincoln's trap; on this issue Denson does not commit himself. The point, rather, is that Lincoln set a trap. Neither does Denson deny that the Southern states, in seceding, were in part motivated by fear that Lincoln would interfere with slavery.
The question that interests him is rather why Lincoln would not let the South depart in peace, and here the answer lies in the tariff, not slavery. It is, by the way, ironic that such self-styled defenders of freedom as Harry Jaffa and his acolyte Timothy Sandefur, who attack "neo-Confederate" views of the sort that Denson here ably advocates, themselves think that slavery was a more efficient economic system than the free market. They hold that, once entrenched, only Lincoln's bellicose policy could have eradicated it. The "neo-Confederates," with greater confidence in freedom, think that free labor would have overcome competition from slaves and that, accordingly, emancipation could have been secured without the horrors of civil war, as it was elsewhere in the world. Sandefur has presumed to "correct" Mises on the efficiency of slave labor; one imagines that the great work of J.E. Cairnes, The Slave Power (New York, 1862), with its cogent argument for the deleterious effects of slavery on economic growth, would likewise meet with his disapproval.
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=336
