Following up on Fort Sumter thread drift: The name of the ship was Star of the West, a merchant ship. That attempt to resupply and reinforce Ft. Sumter with 200 troops took place in January -- after Lincoln had been elected but while Buchanan was still the president. The South Carolinians fired on the Star of the West and she made a hasty retreat.

By April Lincoln had a dilemma. Anderson was running out of supplies in Ft. Sumter. If the Fort was surrendered to South Carolina it would acknowledge that the secessionist government was legit and lose tons of Northern political support for Lincoln. If he tried to blast his into Charleston Harbor to relieve Anderson he'd start a war and probably drive the border states and Virginia to secede. Lots of plots and plans were circulating, but Lincoln decided to go with a plan suggested by a guy named Gustavus V. Fox (great name). Warships would escort supply ships but stop outside the harbor. Food would be loaded on small boats and rowed into the Fort. The warships would fire only if the South Carolinians fired on the small boats.

The relief expedition never went to Charleston. The Southerners knew of the expedition because Lincoln wrote a letter to Governor Pickering to explain that the small boats would only carry humanitarian supplies. The events in Amos' 11:47 AM post followed, and the Fort was attacked before the relief supplies and warships arrived.

Historians debate what Lincoln's motives. It may be that he considered war inevitable, and wanted the South to start the war by firing on unarmed relief boats to rally Northern support for the war. It's also interesting to speculate on whether more border states would have seceded if the Northern warships had attacked the Southern forces surrounding Fort Sumter.
- Phil
Source: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 1988, ISBN 978-0-19-503863-7