As tensions mounted over federal forts still held by the Union in seceded states, Confederate commissioners in Washington sought formal recognition and negotiation with the Lincoln administration. Secretary of State William Seward, through intermediaries, continued to avoid official engagement, a diplomatic stalling pattern that persisted until the standoff at Fort Sumter erupted into war weeks later.
The men waiting in Washington in March 1861 carried credentials from a government the United States did not acknowledge. Martin J. Crawford of Georgia and John Forsyth of Alabama, later joined by André B. Roman of Louisiana, had been dispatched by Jefferson Davis to negotiate the transfer of federal forts and other property in the seceded states and to settle the Confederacy's share of the national debt. On March 12 they sent Secretary of State William H. Seward a formal request for an official audience. Receiving them as envoys would have conceded the very point Abraham Lincoln rejected: that secession was legal and the Confederacy a foreign nation.
Seward answered with a memorandum dated March 15 stating that he could not recognize the commissioners as diplomatic agents or hold correspondence with them. He did not send it. The paper went into a file, and Seward, who still hoped to cool Southern passions and coax the upper South back toward the Union, turned to back channels. Two Supreme Court justices, John A. Campbell of Alabama and Samuel Nelson of New York, carried messages between the secretary and the Confederates. Campbell came away convinced that Seward had promised Fort Sumter would be evacuated within days, and he passed that assurance to the commissioners, who relayed it to Montgomery. Seward, however, did not control policy. Lincoln was weighing an attempt to resupply the garrison at Charleston.
When the commissioners pressed Campbell in early April, Seward sent back a now-notorious line: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see." Within days Lincoln notified South Carolina's governor that provisions were on the way. On April 8 the long-shelved March 15 memorandum was finally handed over, and the commissioners departed Washington, accusing the administration of deliberate deception. Their failed mission helped persuade Confederate leaders that talking was over. Before dawn on April 12, batteries around Charleston Harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter.