the scapegoat, “took the whole blame upon himself, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part; he ought to have been more careful and attentive.”  But he insisted on immediate correction of his error, on the restoration of the Powhatan to the Sumter fleet.  Seward struggled hard for his plan.  Lincoln was inflexible.  As Seward had directed the preparation of the Pickens expedition, Lincoln required him to telegraph to Brooklyn the change in orders.  Seward, beaten by his enemy Welles, was deeply chagrined.  In his agitation he forgot to be formal, forgot that the previous order had gone out in the President’s name, and wired curtly, “Give up the Powhatan.  Seward.”

This despatch was received just as the Pickens expedition was sailing.  The commander of the Powhatan had now before him, three orders.  Naturally, he held that the one signed by the President took precedence over the others.  He went on his way, with his great warship, to Florida.  The Sumter expedition sailed without any powerful ship of war.  In this strange fashion, chance executed Seward’s design.

Lincoln had previously informed the Governor of South Carolina that due notice would be given, should he decide to relieve Sumter.  Word was now sent that “an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort."(25) Though the fleet was not intended to offer battle, it was supposed to be strong enough to force its way into the harbor, should the relief of Sumter be opposed.  But the power to do so was wholly conditioned on the presence in its midst of the Powhatan.  And the Powhatan was far out to sea on its way to Florida.

And now it was the turn of the Confederate government to confront a crisis.  It, no less than Washington, had passed through a period of disillusion.  The assumption upon which its chief politicians had built so confidently had collapsed.  The South was not really a unit.  It was not true that the secession of any one State, on any sort of issue, would compel automatically the secession of all the Southern States.  North Carolina had exploded this illusion.  Virginia had exploded it.  The South could not be united on the issue of slavery; it could not be united on the issue of sectional dread.  It could be united on but one issue-State sovereignty, the denial of the right of the Federal Government to coerce a State.  The time had come to decide whether the cannon at Charleston should fire.  As Seward had foreseen, Montgomery held the trumps; but had Montgomery the courage to play them?  There was a momentous debate in the Confederate Cabinet.  Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State, whose rapid growth in comprehension since December formed a parallel to Lincoln’s growth, threw his influence on the side of further delay.  He would not invoke that “final argument