If you look at just one little factoid, it's not at all what the sum adds up to be. Considering they had the telegraph to send messages where it took days to weeks before, there's a chance some 'changes' to original orders or even additions were made and if one were not included in the address book, they'd be lucky to even find info and then have to decode. I'm not sure at this point in time if all of the officials were for sure that the war could not be avoided. While the beginning is 'said' to have caught them by 'surprise', the set up and chest thumping was no secret. What Beauregard saw, from the Charleston side, was something that had to be responded to and Lincoln the gang knew it.

Even if we weren't alive at the time, we "Remember the Maine". (We even learned of it in our History books, unlike today) So that deal (The Maine) was an accident after all. It got the troops moving til it was sorted out. The USS Cole? Oh you better believe we still have some payback heading for those in on that one. It can't have been different in 1861 and the head dudes knew what button to push.

If the US could take Pickens and then control the Gulf at that point, it sounds like a wise move but why the saber rattling at Charleston? Diversion? Maybe. Whatever it was, the rattle turned into a roar. I’m thinking that there were times when those issuing and/or following orders were banking on old relationships and trust (from their past life at The Point, in the Mexican War, or family connection) to help stall the incoming train. Once the first cannon fired off it’s little ball, all markers were called off if one were on the opposite side. It’s the ’clouded’ and misdirected’ events and reasons that have been given for so many years that keep many from seeing this as a war that began with a valid reason for military action that could be called covert, deliberately misleading, fill in the blanks) Unless one does independent reading and thinking, they will still believe the ’PC/Sugar Coated’ timeline of events. You do not see that the United States took very determined steps before Sumter in the textbooks. Without that knowledge, the rest is easy to spin in one direction. That’s the shame of it but also the accepted part. Spin. We all know how that can be pulled off. Still is. Had Beauregard really wished to do it, the injury and casualty count from inside Sumter could have been much higher. He wasn't trying to hurt anyone. He was trying to get the message across. The message? Simple. "Go Away".

Pam