Some of those who have examined the secession crisis present
Lincoln as neither a war hawk nor a failed peacemaker. Kenneth
M. Stampp and Richard N. Current disagree with those who allege
Lincoln's responsibility for prov oking the Civil War. Indeed,
they argue, one could readily reverse the charge and allege that
the Confederacy was motivated to provoke the war. For Jefferson
Davis and the Confederate government, Sumter provided an o
pportunity to unify the Confederacy, uphold southern honor and
prestige, and drag the upper South out of the Union, despite
Lincoln's best efforts to avoid conflict! It was Davis, after
all, who ordered the attack on Sumter before the arrival of the
expedition. Lincoln the Realist At the same time, these
historians do not think Lincoln was unequivocally committed to a
peaceable resolution of the crisis and the voluntary
reconstruction of the Union. If the President truly sought the
most peaceable course possible, he would have let Sumter go and
taken his symbolic stand for feder