| January 9 |  |
Editor says, what if James Buchanan had sold out the Union? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the July 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1861, on this day a cadet of The Citadel stationed at the Morris Island battery 1st Lt. George Edward "Tuck" Haynesworth fired an artillery shell at the Star of the West; the sloop suffered catastrophic damage and sunk in Charleston Harbor.
Star of the WestNeither outgoing President James Buchanan (pictured) nor President-elect Abraham Lincoln had issued a substantive response in the six weeks since South Carolina had seceded and it seemed certain that decisive executive action would be delayed until after the inauguration. But the problem was that a number of Union facilities were now isolated and in growing need of resupply that could not wait until April.
On the previous day, Federal Troops at Fort Pickens had opened fire on Floridians attempting to seize the fort. And now this situation had arisen. In an attempt to dampen tensions, the War Department had hired a civilian steamship to transport military supplies and reinforcements to the garrison of Fort Sumter stategically located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Because of the sinking, the owners subsequently received £250,000 in compensation from the US Government. But the deaths of Captain John McGowan and his crew created a political firestorm that began to engulf President James Buchanan. The only conceivable peaceful outcome would require the immediate sale of Federal facilities to the seceded states in which they were based. From Buchanan's perspective such a "sell out", accompanied by compensation and a formal apology from South Carolina was an unthinkable solution for his successor, but might well be preferable to the immediate outbreak of hostilities.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Star of the West, Charleston Harbour, South Carolina, Civil War, America. Editor says, in this article we repurpose significant amounts of content from Wikipedia which reports that [in our timeline] "Although the Star of the West did not suffer any major damage, her captain, John McGowan, considered it too dangerous to continue and turned about to leave the harbor. The mission was abandoned and the Star of the West headed for her home port of New York Harbor".
~ In other words...the Fort Sumter crisis is averted before Lincoln takes office, thus preventing or at least delaying the start of the Civil War. But it seems to me that some other crisis would have started the war soon afterwards anyway, because it could not longer be averted at this point. Otherwise, the Fort Sumter crisis probably could have been averted, as you say, by an apology and payment.
~ Buchanon would have been impeached. Remember, the southerners had resigned from the Congress.
~ This would likely have set off the same firestorm that firing on Ft. Sumter did.
~ I wonder what would have happened if, when the southern states had announced that they were succeeding, the Union response had been, "Don't let the border hit you in the butt end on the way out." Maybe worded a touch more diplomatically.
~ Consider the precedent made by "If an election does not go our way we can storm out." on anything resembling a functional central government.
~ Could the war have been avertd?
~ With the precedence for US payment for civilian damages set, it might've been a very different Reconstruction.
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© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
