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Somehow Lincoln managed, despite the chaos, to focus upon the crisis at Sumter. Late at night, he would sit in the library, clothed in his “long-skirted faded dressing-gown, belted around his waist,” his large leather Bible beside him. He liked to read and think in “his big chair by the window,” observed Julia Taft, “in his stocking feet with one long leg crossed over the other, the unshod foot slowly waving back and forth, as if in time to some inaudible music.”

Unwilling to accept Scott’s assumption that Sumter must be evacuated, Lincoln penned a note to the old general, asking for more specifics. Exactly how long could Anderson hold out? What would it take to resupply him and to reinforce Sumter? Scott’s reply laid out a bleak prospect indeed. With the government of South Carolina now preventing the garrison from resupplying in Charleston, Anderson could hold out, Scott estimated, for only twenty-six days. It would require “six to eight months” to assemble the “fleet of war vessels & transports, 5,000 additional regular troops & 20,000 volunteers” necessary to resupply and reinforce the garrison.

Rumors spread that Sumter would soon be surrendered, but Lincoln “was disinclined to hasty action,” Welles recorded in his diary, “and wished time for the Administration to get in working order and its policy to be understood.” Repeatedly, he called his cabinet into session to discuss the situation. He met with Francis Blair, who, like his son, Monty, believed passionately that the surrender of Sumter “was virtually a surrender of the Union unless under irresistible force—that compounding with treason was treason to the Govt.”

At Monty Blair’s suggestion, Lincoln met with his brother-in-law, Gustavus Fox, a former navy officer who had developed an ingenious plan for relief by sea. Bread and supplies could be loaded onto two sturdy tugboats, shadowed by a large steamer conveying troops ready to fire if the tugs were opposed. Intrigued, Lincoln asked Fox to present his plan; and the next day, March 15, the cabinet gathered around the long table to discuss the stratagem. Lincoln seldom took his seat, pacing up and down as he spoke. After the meeting, he sent a memo to each of the members, asking for a written response to the following question: “Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort-Sumpter, under all the circumstances, is it wise to attempt it?”

Seward, who had exerted himself in the previous months trying to mollify the Union’s remaining slave states, found the idea of provisioning Sumter and sending troops to South Carolina detestable. From his suite in the old State Department, a two-story brick building containing only thirty-two rooms, Seward drafted his reply, while his son Frederick, who had been confirmed by the Senate as assistant secretary of state, handled the crowds downstairs. In his lengthy reply to the president, Seward reiterated that without the conciliation measures that had solidified the Unionist sentiment in the South, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and the border states would have joined the Confederacy. The attempt to supply Fort Sumter with armed forces would inevitably provoke the remaining slave states to secede and launch a civil war—that “most disastrous and deplorable of national calamities.” Far better, Seward advised, to assume a defensive position, leaving “the necessity for action” in the hands of “those who seek to dismember and subvert this Union…. In that case, we should have the spirit of the country and the approval of mankind on our side.” His emphatic negative reply probably reached Lincoln within minutes, for the State Department was adjacent to the northern wing of the Treasury Department and connected by a short pathway to the White House.

Chase did not return his answer until the following day, repairing that evening to his suite at the Willard Hotel. Considering his hard-line credentials, Chase returned a surprisingly evasive and equivocal reply: “If the attempt will so inflame civil war as to involve