More Important than the Cabinet Council on Emancipation

[AussieMick]

Wasnt it Seward that (IMO) had a brain snap over the issue of re-supplying Fort Sumter ?

I guess the point I'm making is that Seward is speaking from a biased standpoint ... yes, a very relevant and knowledgeable one , but nevertheless he was so close to the action and so deeply committed to the action he thought correct that he would inevitably say Sumpter was more important than the Emancipation Council.

I think its comparing apples with oranges. Sumpter was a crisis event involving many meetings and several decisions with an increasing pressure for something to happen. The Emancipation Council was a slow-burning issue with only one possible outcome ... but a question as to when that would occur and ... what would be the ramifications. The importance of this question was basically the fundamental principle of the war ... and what the USA would become. Sumpter was a flashpoint. The Emancipation was a nation-changing event. (OK, so was the Civil War ... but in a negative sense )

David Donald writes 'he (Lincoln) did not acknowledge that his ineffectual leadership contributed to the crisis' (p.293, Lincoln). I'd suggest that Lincoln in fact showed considerable leadership at a time when most (all other?) people would have been a shivering wreck.
There are parallels perhaps with Pres. Kennedy and the Cuban Bay of Pigs.