omic solidarity. Sentimental and constitutional
forces were proving more powerful than economics. Thereupon Montgomery's
problem was transformed. Its purpose was to build a Southern nation and
it had believed hitherto that economic forces had put into its hands
the necessary tools. Now it must throw them aside and get possession of
others. It must evoke those sentimental and constitutional forces that
so many rash statesmen have always considered negligible. Consequently,
for the South no less than for the North, the issue was speedily shifted
from slavery to sovereignty. Just how this was brought about we do
not yet know. Whether altogether through foresight and statesmanlike
deliberation, or in part at least through what might almost be called
accidental influences, is still a little uncertain. The question narrows
itself to this: why was Sumter fired upon precisely when it was? There
are at least three possible answers.

(1) That the firing was dictated purely by military necessity. A belief
that Lincoln intended to reinforce as well as to supply Sumter, that if
not taken now it could never be taken, may have been the over-mastering
idea in the Confederate Cabinet. The reports of the Commissioners at
Washington were tinged throughout by the belief that Seward and Lincoln
were both double-dealers. Beauregard, in command at Charleston, reported
that pilots had come in from the sea and told him of Federal war-ships
sighted off the Carolina coast. O. R. 297, 300, 301, 304, 305.

(2) A political motive which to-day is not so generally intelligible as
once it was, had great weight in 1861. This was the sense of honor
in politics. Those historians who brush it aside as a figment lack
historical psychology. It is possible that both Governor Pickens and the
Confederate Cabinet were animated first of all by the belief that the
honor of South Carolina required them to withstand the attempt of what
they held to be an alien power.

(3) And yet, neither of these explanations, however much either or both
may have counted for in many minds, gives a convincing explanation of
the agitation of Toornbs in the Cabinet council which decided to fire
upon Sumter. Neither of these could well be matters of debate. Everybody
had to be either for or against, and that would be an end. The Toombs
of that day was a different man from the Toombs of three months earlier.
Some radical change had taken place in his thought What could it have
been if