April 5, 1861 (Friday)

Trees Blossoming....

From The Lincoln Log:  April 5, 1861

"Comdr. Dahlgren at White House again today, finds Lincoln "ill at ease, and not self possessed."

"White House levee cancelled because of public business."

"President receives first (March) salary warrant for $2,083.33 and opens account by depositing it with Riggs and Co."


Diary of William Howard Russell:  hat tip Daily Observations from the Civil War, April 5, 1861.

"The last cabinet had tampered with treason, and had contained traitors; a miserable imbecility had encouraged the leaders of the South to mature their plans, and had furnished them with the means of carrying out their design."


Finally, an article by Nina Silber, "Men at War,"  Disunion--New York Times, April 4, 2011.   A look at the reasons the non-slave-holding white men of the South entered into the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.

"Most historians now argue -- and contemporary documents bear them out --  that the leaders of the Confederacy were, above all, motivated by a desire to protect their system of slavery.  Leaving the Union, they believed, was the surest way to preserve an institution that was now threatened by the newly-elected, and self-proclaimed anti-slavery, president, Abraham Lincoln.

But if slavery motivated the leaders -- almost all of them slave-owners -- where did that leave the vast majority of Southerners, the men who owned no slaves but filled the ranks of the Confederate army?  For them, the answer was less about the slave economy or states' rights than the perceived threat that abolition posed to their very identity as white men." 
(Read the details of the argument at the link above)