both theories of confederate motivation are right –the landed gentry, planters, chevalier society wanted to keep the slaves pickin’ their cotton, the learned boojwahzee fell upon defense of state’s rights seen in the Constitution, and johnny reb the soldier boy was afighting for his family and friends and they homeland. These three themes are what is seen in the vast body of evidence they created –books written, newspaper editorials, reams of letters from plain folk to loved ones, and so forth.
The Battle of Fort Sumter, the catalyst what started the fight, took place a full four months after S. Carolina had officially seceded.
During that four months, the Charleston mayor and officials had been in constant contact with the fort’s command, trying to find a way to peacefully return the garrison to the union. Offers of train tickets, free passage to relief vessels, whatnot. Foodstuffs were regularly traded as usual tho now unofficially. Two seperate high-level delegations journeyed to DC to lobby for a commercial deal, a Carolinian purchase of the federal property in the ongoing construction refurbishment of the old fort; these delegations were referred up the chain to the president himself –who refused to see them, ignoring daily requests over periods of weeks in both occasions.
When the union announced a naval resupply convoy would be sent a few weeks hence to resupply the garrison, the South Carolinians made great effort to talk the federal gov’t out of running this convoy, as it would amount to an armed foreign navy entering into Charleston harbor under hostile conditions.
When the convoy launched anyway, the confederate command communicated with the fort command, announcing that if the situation maintained as is, that at a certain hour on a certain day, a bombardment would have to ensue, to attempt to force a surrender before the union navy arrived.
Duly, when the time came and the cannons fired, the garrison was well under cover. When –after a sufficient fire to allow the honorable surrender –the white flag went up, not a single federal soldier had been killed or wounded. However, and unfortunately, when by pre-arrangement with the confederate command the garrison fired off a salute as part of the lowering of the flag ceremony, one of their own cannon blew up and injured several and iirc killed one of the federal cannoneers.
And that was it, the federal garrison evacuated back to DC, and the island in Charleston harbor and the fort upon it passed to the confederate state of south carolina. Soon after, union armies would cross the borders into the confederacy and attempt to establish federal control of the new capital of the new nation in Richmond, Virginia. Confederate armies would oppose this movement, and so commenced a war.
