‘Any Southerner who worked for Lincoln should be outlawed and killed.” That was the opinion of the editor of the Georgia Star in the early weeks of 1861. The Charleston Mercury agreed: “Lincoln is a bloodthirsty tyrant.” The chairman of the Alabama Young Man’s Club invoked a higher power: “Resistance to Lincoln is obedience to God.” South Carolina had seceded weeks after the 1860 election put Lincoln in the White House, and the new president found himself in charge of a shattered Union that he had sworn to protect and preserve.
