Lincoln had no experience in developing strategic doctrine, and the program of self-education he set for himself by reading textbooks in military science never raised his sights above conventional, and sometimes deeply-flawed, notions of strategy. On a few occasions, he even suggested taking field command of the armies; May 9–10, 1862, he personally participated in an amphibious expedition that captured Norfolk, Virginia. However, his real genius lay along the lines where political and military issues met, and as the constitutionally mandated commander-in-chief of the United States army and navy, he turned his attention to four major areas of war-related policy-making.
Legal Status of the War
Lincoln maintained that the secession of the Confederate states was a constitutional and legal nullity. The federal Union, as shaped by the Constitution, did not allow individual states to unilaterally withdraw from the Union. Once the Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter April 12–14, 1861, Lincoln issued a proclamation, calling on
the states for 75,000 militia to suppress what he described (using the words of the Militia Act of 1792) as "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings." Hence, Lincoln regarded the Civil War, from the viewpoint of law, strictly as a local insurrection, rather than a declared war between two sovereign and equal nations.
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