d that on this point time
justified his fears.

His dealings with the Confederate commissioners show that he was playing
to gain time, not with intent to deceive the Southerners but to acquire
that domination over Lincoln which he felt was his by natural right.
Intending to institute a peace policy the moment he gained this
ascendency, he felt perfectly safe in making promises to the
commissioners through mutual friends. He virtually told them that Sumter
would eventually be given up and that all they need do was to wait.

Seward brought to bear upon the President the opinions of various
military men who thought the time had passed when any expedition for the
relief of Sumter could succeed. For some time Lincoln seemed about
to consent, though reluctantly, to Seward's lead in the matter of the
forts. He was pulled up standing, however, by the threatened resignation
of the Postmaster-General, Blair. After a conference with leading
Republican politicians the President announced to his Cabinet that
his policy would include the relief of Sumter. "Seward," says Welles,
"...was evidently displeased."

Seward now took a new tack. Fort Pickens, at Pensacola, was a problem
similar to that of Sumter at Charleston. Both were demanded by the
Confederates, and both were in need of supplies. But Fort Pickens lay
to one side, so to speak, of the public mind, and there was not
conspicuously in the world's eye the square issue over it that there
was over Sumter. Seward conceived the idea that, if the President's
attention were diverted from Sumter to Pickens and a relief expedition
were sent to the latter but none to the former, his private negotiations
with the Confederates might still be kept going; Lincoln might yet be
hypnotized; and at last all would be well.

On All-Fools' Day, 1861, in the midst of a press of business, he
obtained Lincoln's signature to some dispatches, which Lincoln, it
seems, discussed with him hurriedly and without detailed consideration.
There were now in preparation two relief expeditions, one to carry
supplies to Pensacola, the other to Charleston. Neither was to fight
if it was not molested. Both were to be strong enough to fight if
their commanders deemed it necessary. As flagship of the Charleston
expedition, Welles had detailed the powerful warship Powhatan, which
was rapidly being made ready at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Such was the
situation as Welles understood it when he was thinking of bed late o