My friend claims Lincoln was a warmonger and that we should have let the south split from the union.
Your friend may be interested in our FAQ, which has several sections on the US Civil War.
So there are a couple books that take this approach. I have to confess I’m hopelessly biased. I love Abraham Lincoln. However, I’ve read dozens of books and have his complete works. So I also know the man. Anyway, there’s a book called The Real Lincoln by Thomas Di Lorenzo. I’ve read it; I think it’s got a lot of holes in it and it’s not a very realistic portrayal of Lincoln. There’s a couple of assumptions your friend is making here. The first is that Lincoln caused the war. The second is that even if he didn’t cause the war per se, he could have just let the South go. So, we should examine those two ideas in some detail.
So later on, during and after the election, southern fire-eaters were ready to leave the Union knowing that Lincoln would breeze into the White House, since the Democratic party was divided. Some senators, like James Hammond, urged patience and caution, asking other, more radical members of the party, to wait and see what Lincoln did. Southern secessionists, for their part, insisted that the Constitution did not prohibit secession, and digging deeper, some even argued that since the states rebelled separately against the British, they maintained their sovereignty. Douglas Egerton insists that the war was about slavery, and southern fire eaters would have agreed in the summer and fall of 1860. What secessionists feared, in regards to slavery, wasn’t necessarily Lincoln; they feared Republicans would grow in strength and number, eventually stacking the Supreme Court (which is precisely what Southern Democrats did for so long) and outlaw slavery. In this regard, even Lincoln’s moderate policy of containment was terrifying. (Year of Meteors, Douglas Egerton, 217-220) So keeping in that kind, it’s clear that no matter what Lincoln did, he couldn’t have avoided secession. Remember, he was a Republican, and during his election, he was not even viewed with much enthusiasm. Seward was still the theoretical head of the party. This means Lincoln certainly couldn’t say “I won’t touch slavery whatsoever,” because part of the Republican party platform was containment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Republican_National_Convention, see the section on the Republican platform.) Lincoln was really stuck here. He wasn’t yet strong enough to break away from Republican thought, nor did he want to, but even if he did, he couldn’t.
In regards to what Lincoln thought about secession, he thought it to be “mostly bluster.” He felt that he had made it clear he wouldn’t touch slavery where it existed, and he didn’t understand the fire eater mindset (see above) (A. Lincoln, Ronald C. White, 345). However, after his election, he also urged en like Lyman Trumbull, in the Senate, “let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery.” Meanwhile, radical newspapers in the South like the Richmond Enquirer called Lincoln’s election a “declaration of war.” (White, A. Lincoln, 361) So let’s examine the landscape here, just before Fort Sumter. Lincoln wasn’t even asking much, only that Republicans not whiff on the extension of slavery, which was always his stance. However, in the South, fire eaters weren’t’ satisfied with this because even containment was anathema to their way of life. Do you see what I am saying? Lincoln could never be conservative enough for the secessionists of the South. And he wasn’t even particularly radical at this point, at least not for a Republican (see, for example, Seward’s “higher law” speech. YIKES!)
Finally, during the Fort Sumter affair, where the first shots were fired, Lincoln let Charleston know that he was sending supplies, and that it wouldn’t include weapons. However, people in Charleston didn’t care what Lincoln said, and demanded Fort Sumter’s surrender. For Lincoln’s part, he didn’t feel that Southern claims of founding a new nation were legitimate or legal. (Tried by War, James M McPherson, 21-22) So Lincoln tried to find some wiggle room, but there was none to be had. To me, I read about Lincoln’s time before his inauguration and shortly after and see a man who didn’t exactly know what he was in for, not as a warmonger. The claim that his effort to resupply Fort Sumter was a warmongering effort has some very short legs to it. He probably knew what the South would do. But that’s the thing right? It was the South’s decision. The South bears the responsibility, not Lincoln. Besides this, again, it’s important to remember Lincoln didn’t believe the South was legally or morally right.
The first point I’d like to make is that Lincoln was, well, legally bound to defend the Union and Constitution, because he took the Oath of Office. He couldn’t legally let states leave the Union he vowed to defend. Lincoln also felt though, that the Southern states were in the wrong legally and morally.
Recall what Lincoln said during his speech as a Congressman. He felt that revolution was only warranted if it liberated people. In regards to the Dred Scott decision, Lincoln argued that “The condition of the Negro in America had worsened over the years and ‘never appeared as hopeless’ as in the 1850s, when ‘all the powers of the earth’ seemed to combine against him.” (Slavery, Law and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective, Don Fehrenbacher, 238) Lincoln believed that blacks were fully human, and that the Declaration gave them the same rights as white men. This belief would fully mature during Lincoln’s time in office and he got to see African Americans serve and even became friends with one (Frederick Douglass). How then, could southern secession be liberating when it was upholding slavery, which Lincoln thought had to be regarded as an evil to be contained constitutionally? What was happening was that southern fire eaters were leaving the Union to keep other human beings in bondage. Certainly Lincoln couldn’t live with this could he? (Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s, Don Fehrenbacher, 107). Put it another way: doesn’t a person usually do something when they see another human being grossly mistreated? If Lincoln had done nothing, he’d be criticized as a hypocrite like Jefferson or Madison, or morally reprehensible. Even as is, he’s still called a racist in some circles. So he can’t win. His rise to greatness was predicated on the slavery question, and his opposition to expansion. Remember, it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which Lincoln thought exchanged the moral condemnation of slavery for people having the right to choose a moral wrong, that brought Lincoln out of hiding (Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era, Nicole Etcheson, 25). How could Lincoln turn his back on the question, either from a moral perspective, or from a practical standpoint?
The question is whether Lincoln was right from a Constitutional Perspective. The answer, to me, is found in his speech at Cooper Union. Lincoln raised the central question on the debate with his speech, asking “does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid a federal government to control as to slavery in our federal territories?” To answer this question, Lincoln cites the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President, Harold Holzer, 253-255). What Lincoln does is examine the voting record of the Founding Fathers (i.e. the men at the Constitutional Convention) and produces amazing statistics. For example, Lincoln points out that all 16 of the “fathers” who served in the first Congress, voted to enforce the Northwest Ordinance. Recall that the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in that territory by federal mandate; the federal government was in fact regulating slavery. Then, in regards to the Mississippi territory, three more founders, John Langdon, George Read, and Abraham Baldwin, voted to allow the federal government to regulate slavery. The statistics don’t stop there though; in 1804 Jonathan Dayton along with Baldwin voted for federal oversight in the Louisiana territory. Finally, in 1820, Rufus King voted to ban slavery’s extension during the Missouri Compromise crisis. The long and short of it then, is that 21 of 23 Founders who had a chance to vote for federal oversight on slavery did so! (Lincoln at Cooper’s Union, 126-127) We also know how the founders felt from their personal correspondence and journals about the issue of slavery.