In the chap­ter “Some Good Thing in the Wind,” occur­ring between March 24–27, Lin­coln sought to gauge the extent of pro-Union sen­ti­ment in South Car­oli­na, par­tic­u­lar­ly Charleston. He dis­patched two emis­saries, Stephen A. Hurl­but and Ward Lam­on, to ascer­tain the local mood fol­low­ing Cap­tain Fox’s assess­ment of Fort Sumter. Hurl­but, a for­mer res­i­dent with a dubi­ous past, trav­eled under the guise of vis­it­ing fam­i­ly but report­ed back to Lin­coln about the height­ened war prepa­ra­tions in the region, includ­ing armed ship­ments and mor­tars at the rail depot.

Dur­ing his brief stay, Hurl­but inter­act­ed with sev­er­al promi­nent locals, notably Judge James Peti­gru, South Carolina’s lead­ing union­ist, who con­firmed a strong local sen­ti­ment favor­ing sep­a­ra­tion from the Union. Hurlbut’s report high­light­ed that the spir­it of nation­al patri­o­tism in the state had fad­ed, replaced by an over­whelm­ing alle­giance to South Car­oli­na itself. He warned Lin­coln of the impend­ing con­se­quences if any fed­er­al action was tak­en in the seced­ed states, pre­dict­ing that such moves would insti­gate war.

Lam­on, Lincoln’s oth­er envoy, met with Gov­er­nor Pick­ens and con­veyed a mes­sage of sup­posed fed­er­al with­draw­al from Fort Sumter, despite his lack of offi­cial author­i­ty. This meet­ing hint­ed at an effort to pre­vent con­flict, with Lam­on sug­gest­ing to Pick­ens that an evac­u­a­tion was immi­nent. Lamon’s con­ver­sa­tions with Major Ander­son at Fort Sumter revealed con­cerns about a for­mal mil­i­tary sur­ren­der, which Ander­son deemed dis­hon­or­able.

The ten­sion esca­lat­ed when Beau­re­gard sent a note to Ander­son to clar­i­fy that no sur­ren­der was expect­ed, but also referred to rumors of a poten­tial explo­sion of the fort upon aban­don­ment. This infu­ri­at­ed Ander­son, who vehe­ment­ly reject­ed any impli­ca­tion of dis­hon­or. As this dra­ma unfold­ed, Gen­er­al Win­field Scott in Wash­ing­ton rep­ri­mand­ed Ander­son for his sup­posed inten­tions regard­ing the fort, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing moti­va­tions and expec­ta­tions.

In Wash­ing­ton, Sec­re­tary Seward met with William Rus­sell from the Lon­don Times, rec­og­niz­ing the lat­ter’s influ­ence on pub­lic opin­ion as the gov­ern­ment con­front­ed the seces­sion cri­sis. Seward’s dis­cus­sions hint­ed at an ambigu­ous strat­e­gy con­cern­ing Fort Sumter, ulti­mate­ly reflect­ing the admin­is­tra­tion’s hes­i­ta­tion while Lin­coln pre­pared for his first offi­cial state din­ner amidst grow­ing pres­sures relat­ed to the brew­ing con­flict .