President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to aid Fort Sumter, located in Charleston, South Carolina’s harbor, by sending unarmed ships with food and medical supplies triggered a quick response from Confederate President Jefferson Davis. General P. G. T. Beauregard was authorized to order Fort Sumter’s surrender before the supply ships reached the harbor, and before dawn on the morning of April 12, 1861, Confederate guns opened fire. The siege lasted for 33 hours, and without necessary food, munitions, and other supplies, Major Robert Anderson, USA, was forced to surrender the fort.

The United States Civil War had begun.

A favorite young adult book read and reread by my daughter decades ago, entitled Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt, traces the conflict and its impact on families caught up in the war. I’ve always found that title to be profound because the early newspaper reports on both sides of the line of conflict speculated that the “war” would last no longer than six weeks. Instead, the U.S. Civil War would become the bloodiest and most devastating armed conflict in our nation’s history. Some 160 years later, the stories of death and valor still capture our hearts — invoking real pain and aching pride.

President Lincoln, newly inaugurated and an admittedly inexperienced national leader, found himself faced with the challenge of saving the Union. When Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas seceded following the engagement at Fort Sumter, the Confederate states stood ready for war.

Lincoln seized the strategic plan developed primarily by aging but experienced General Winfield Scott — "Old Fuss and Feather" himself — and authorized the Anaconda Plan. The plan focused on the Union’s ability to encircle the Confederacy and kill it by constricting its options for success. Included in the plan was the idea of blockading the South, preventing intervention by England, the South’s primary consumer of cotton, and quickly taking the border states, especially Virginia. It’s contiguous proximity to Washington, DC, was a serious threat. Armed forces would then divide the South by taking the Mississippi River, separating East from West.

Enacting the plan would prove difficult and required Lincoln to raise a volunteer army of citizens prepared to fight and possibly die for the Union; identify the right military leaders who could engage and defeat the enemy; challenge the North’s factories and farms to accelerate production in support of the war; silence the opposition with persuasive arguments; and find a way to win a war that would facilitate a peace that would allow a “return” to the Union. And what was the answer to the slavery question?

The challenge for Lincoln seems overwhelming even today, and most historians agree that it was — and remains even today — the greatest threat to the survival of this Union based on the idea that men and women are capable of governing themselves.

Lincoln struggled for several years in finding the most skilled military commander. General Winfield Scott created the original plan but was too seasoned — i.e., too elderly — for battlefield commander. Scott was followed by Generals George McClellan and then Henry Halleck before General Ulysses Grant took command in late 1863. Grant had demonstrated that he would not retreat, that he would pursue the enemy whenever they retreated, and that he understood the war would only be won by taking the fight into the heart of the South and inflicting ever-increasing destruction. Aided by his protégé, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Grant would eventually deliver the one-two knockout punch, but that day was far into the future.

In the meantime, the president faced serious threats to his leadership. First, his commanders could not command if they did not have an army. The Union first fielded an all-volunteer army comprised of career soldiers and sailors — many educated at West Point and Annapolis — but by 1863, the Union was forced to enact a conscription law requiring military service of able-bodied men. Even with the draft, more than two-thirds of all men on the field were volunteers. Lincoln worked closely with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in supplying the troops with necessary implements of war. Stanton excelled working as the connection between the factories and farms and the U.S. troops.

The president felt the weight of having ordered men into combat, and he often visited the camps. Having served in the Black Hawk War, he understood the battlefield and was especially concerned about young soldiers designated as “deserters.” His frequent use of the presidential pardon for those soldiers is perhaps one of the actions that best demonstrates his humanity. After all, he had a young son in the fight.

But the arc of battle had not reached its zenith and the future remained uncertain.