Tampa Tribune Wednesday December 14, 1932

“QUOTNG HISTORY”

“Tampa.- Your Winter Haven correspondent ““R”” seems to blunder into history and gets his facts mixed up somewhat. He states that Nicolay and Hay, in their biography of Abraham Lincoln, wrote ““Congress had neglected to provide measures and means for coercion…the President determined on war and with the purpose of making it appear that the South was the aggressor took measures. He sought to bring about the attack on Fort Sumter.””

None of which is to be found in the book referred to except the first clause-“Congress had neglected to provide measures and means for coercion- and that clause refers wholly to Buchanan’s explanation some months previously to Lincoln’s inauguration, as to why he had not put down the rebellion as Andrew Jackson had met a similar secession 30 years prior. It might be well to suggest to ““R”” that Lincoln notified the Governor of South Carolina, as he had promised to do, that he was about to deliver provisions and supplies for the government fort in Charleston harbor, Fort Sumter, whose small force was practically without food. He had also advised Major Anderson in command at Fort Sumter, to use his own judgment as to giving the fort or holding to it.

Nicolay and Hay never wrote this bit of history as given by ““R”” and he is invited to quote the book from which he gathered his statement, giving volume and page numbers. Lincoln was a remarkably fair President and had the slave owners not disdainfully put away Lincoln’s tender of payment for the slaves’ freedom, the South would have been decidedly better off. W. F. Ewell”