Northerners called on President Kennedy to “relieve” General Grant for failing to preserve the honor of the federal government, while Southerners rallied to support the grandson of the man whose troops had mowed down their forebears from Shiloh to Appomattox. From the point of view of the White House advisers, the second battle of Fort Sumter was a farcical tempest over the hotel accommodations for a single Negro woman, proving that the President would probably look foolish and impotent if he tried to act nobly in racial politics.
