Louis T. Wigfall quote: "No one now doubts that Lincoln intends war"

Kenneth Almquist

Corporal
Joined
Apr 25, 2014
Telegram from Louis T. Wigfall to Jefferson Davis, dated April 10, 1861:

No one now doubts that Lincoln intends war. The delay on his part is only to complete his preparations. All here is ready on our side. Our delay therefore is to his advantage, and our disadvantage. Let us take Fort Sumter before we have to fight the fleet and the fort. General Beauregard will not act without your order. Let me suggest to you to send the order to him to begin the attack as soon as he is ready. Virginia is excited by the preparations, and a bold stroke on our side will complete her purposes. Policy and prudence are urgent upon us to begin at once. Let me urge the order to attack most seriously upon you.​

Is this telegram authentic? It has been quoted uncritically by a number of historians, including:
  • Lincoln and the First Shot, by Richard N. Current (1963), page 151
  • Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War, by Maury Klein (1999), page 399
  • Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, by Richard Striner (2006), page 130
  • Eyewitness to the Civil War: The Complete History from Secession to Reconstruction, by Neil Kagan & Stephen Garrison Hyslop (2006), page 55
  • Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2 by Michael Burlingame (2013), page 128
Current doesn't seem to cite a source (his footnotes are a mess), and Striner cites Current.

It appears that the source for this telegram is Wigfall's daughter, Louise Wigfall Wright. She included the telegram in a Sept. 1904 magazine article (McClure's Magazine, Volume 23, page 452). The telegram as quoted above comes from A Southern Girl in '61, written the following year by the same author, starting on page 36. The only difference from the magazine article is a single comma.

On page 101 of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Volume 7, we find the telegram listed, with a reference to Wright's book. That suggests that the editors were unable to locate the original telegram.

I'm not sure what to make of this. The telegram's contents seem entirely plausible. I can't spot anything that suggests that Wright invented it. On the other hand, Wright is writing more than 40 years after the event, and doesn't cite a source. It would seem that to accept the telegram as genuine, we must believe that a copy of the telegram was preserved for more than 40 years, but eventually destroyed, without a professional historian ever seeing it.
 
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