It has been said that the Confederate states began the war by firing upon Fort Sumter. If those states had the right to withdraw from the Union and the United States had no right to resist or coerce them then the attempt to maintain a garrisoned fort in one of the most important harbors of the Confederacy, was an act of war. This had, nevertheless, been patiently borne with, for nearly three months after the secession of South Carolina, in whose principal harbor the Fort was situated, and it was only when the Government of the United States had given notice of its intention to supply Fort Sumter "peaceably, if possible, otherwise by force," and the vessels for that purpose had appeared off the harbor, that the attack began. The commissioners sent to Washington to effect a peaceable settlement of all questions had then been denied an audience, and informed that the authorities at Washington would hold no intercourse with them. The war was thus inevitable, and the Federal authorities were quietly preparing for it, in order to entrap the border states. The threat to supply Fort Sumter indicated a purpose of war; was then the Confederate Government to wait until the measures of the Government at Washington had been so completely taken that the former would find itself helpless in the hands of its enemy? The port of Charleston was necessary to it as an inlet for obtaining supplies and arms for its defence, was it then to allow the port, which could block the entrance to that harbor, to be placed in a condition to render the blockade complete, the harbor worthless and Charleston untenable? There can be no question of the right of the Confederate Government to force a surrender of the fort, which had been refused, and that it was fully warranted in pursuing the course it did. I must confess that, at the time, I deeply deplored and condemned the attack on Fort Sumter, on the score of policy, because I regarded the threat of the Washington Government as designed to provoke a commencement of the conflict by the firing of the first shot, and not intended really to be carried into effect. It is now manifest that war had already been resolved upon, and the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter was not its commencement. The war was begun by the attempt to hold the forts in the Confederate harbors.