"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ``preserve, protect and defend'' it."

Sam, there was some discussion in the recent past which explored, and in some cases posited, the possibility of Lincoln having engineered the firing on Fort Sumter, to make the South the agressors he cited. Though there were some letters, etc., which could have indicated that was the case, there was no conclusive evidence. I guess we'll never know. Stan