Like the Civil War itself, however, Sumter remains the subject of considerable controversy. Contemporary recollections, popular investigations, and historical analyses, have offered different assessments of a variety of issues connected with the outbreak of fighting. The most intense debate has focused on Lincoln, some of whose critics at the time, as well as later, held him responsible for the war and contended that he deliberately provoked the South into firing on Fort Sumter. In their view, Lincoln deliberately and disingenuously fixed the onus for starting the war on the Confederacy. To be sure, scholars have also investigated the Confederate government, and some hold it accountable for the fighting. But it is Lincoln's decisions and motives that have been most closely scrutinized. From: Bibliography: Current, Lincoln and the First Shot, pp. 7-12, 182-208; Stampp, Imperiled Union, pp. 163-88; McWhiney, "Confederacy's First Shot," pp. 5-6; Robertson, American Myth, American Reality, pp. 324-31; Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Bender, p. 541.

The most intense debate has focused on > Lincoln, some of whose critics at the time, as well as later, held him responsible > for the war and contended that he deliberately provoked the South into firing > on Fort Sumter. In their view, Lincoln deliberately and disingenuously fixed > the onus for starting the war on the Confederacy. Oh, I guess since the South was provoked, it was not responsible for its actions. They were forced to fire on Ft. Sumter. That evil Lincoln! Bad Bad Lincoln! It was all his fault! -SW

" The most intense debate has focused on Lincoln, some of whose critics at the time, as well as later, held him responsible for the war and contended that he deliberately provoked the South into firing on Fort Sumter." And that is truly revisionist history, where events and motives are fictionalized to support one view - that the South could do no wrong, and that the war was entirely the fault of the North, particularly of Lincoln. By the time of his first inauguration, March 4, 1861, the southern states were intent on war, and nothing that happened then or later was going to stop it. Lincoln has been made the goat by neo-confederates, but only by them. Lincoln is the great hero of the era. He paid with his life, but his reputation among people of reason remains intact. Sharon In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861