THE REDUCTION OF FORT SUMTER
The events that brought about the Confederate War, the conditions and
circumstances under which it occurred, and the passions and prejudices
which inspired that bloody and most lamentable conflict have been
sufficiently and quite truthfully set forth, the author believes, in
the preceding chapters of this work. He has sought to show them forth
without prejudice, and in a spirit of the utmost candor and fairness.
It is the function of the historian to record facts, not to complain of
them; to describe conditions, not to criticize them.
After nearly half a century of study it is the firm conviction of
the present historian that the Confederate war was a necessary and
unescapable result of historic conditions; that nobody in particular
was to blame for it, because there was nobody who could have prevented
or averted it. History and circumstance had combined to compel its
occurrence, and for its occurrence no person and no party was in
any accountable way responsible. It occurred because the logic of
circumstance compelled it, and it was fought out with conscience upon
both sides.
Incidentally there were wrongs done in its conduct, quite as a
matter of course. He must be a stupid reader of history who does not
understand that the doing of wrong is inevitable in every great
historical event. But he must also be a very stupid and prejudiced
reader of history who can contemplate the story of the Confederate war
without realizing that on the one side and on the other conscience was
the inspiring motive of it. He must be dull indeed who fails to see
that devotion had its part to play on both sides and that on both sides
it played it well, to the everlasting glory of the American name.
The story of the war on the one side, and on the other, is a story of
American heroism in courage and in endurance, in battle and in camp,
in action and in the patient submission to hardship, in dash and in
defeat, in assault and in retreat. The purpose of the succeeding
chapters is to tell that story without passion or prejudice, without
fear or favor, and with no flinching from the truth, whithersoever it
may lead.
So far as actual fighting was concerned, the war began with the
bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor on the morning of
April 12, 1861.
When President Lincoln was inaugurated, the total military force at
command of the Government amounted to a mere handful of men, and these
were mainly occupied with the duty of garrisoning frontier posts and
maintaining the subjection of the Indians. So far as eastern positions
were concerned there were scarcely enough men in the forts to take care
of the government property there and perform a perfunctory guard duty.
The total force in Charleston Harbor consisted of seventy men under
command of Major Robert Anderson. This force occupied Fort Moultrie,
at that time an indefensible position by reason of the unfinished
character of its fortifications and the ease of approach to it from the
land side.
As a matter of military prudence and under a threat of war, Major
Anderson decided to transfer his little force to the far more
defensible and, to Charleston, the far more threatening work, Fort
Sumter. This he did in the early morning of December 26, 1860.
This military transfer of force from an indefensible to a defensible
work, was construed by the Confederates to be a distinct violation of
the agreement which had been made by the Buchanan administration, to
the general effect that, pending final negotiations, there should be no
change made in the military situation at any point in the South.
Major Anderson's transfer of his little force from Fort Moultrie, where
it might easily have been captured from the land side to the sea-girt
fortress in the middle of the harbor, was held to be a violation of
this compact. Without going into the lawyers' quibbles concerning that
question, let us recognize the situation and relate the events that
grew out of it.
The Confederates, under the skilled direction of General Beauregard,
a little later began the construction of works and the emplacement
of guns that should completely command Fort Sumter. There was in all
this a good deal of the "fuss and feathers" that plays so large a
part in the beginning of every war made by a people wholly unused to
military operations. With a field battery and one columbiad or one
Dahlgren gun, General Beauregard could easily have reduced Fort Sumter
on any one of the long days of waiting and preparation. Or, with a
single battalion of determined men he could have taken it by assault
in spite of such resistance as its feeble defending force could have
offered. But those were the days of spectacular effects. The "pomp and
circumstance of glorious war" were necessary agents in the work of so
exciting the southern mind as to overcome the reluctance of Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri to join the
seceding column. So pomp and circumstance were freely invoked.
General Beauregard's preparations for the reduction of a brick fort
which must quickly crumble under an efficient artillery fire, defended
as it was by less than a single company of men, were such as might have
been made for the reduction of some fortress like that at Gibraltar, or
the elaborate works in the Bermuda Islands.
But it was not the purpose of either side to bring on the inevitable
war as yet. The quibbling lawyers and phrase-mongering diplomatists
were busy at work in wordy fence, each trying to force upon the other
the technical responsibility of beginning the war by some act of
forcible aggression.
On both sides every nerve was strained to make military preparations,
precisely as if the coming of war had been recognized as certain--as
in fact it was--while on both sides there was a jealously maintained
pretense of entirely peaceful purposes. The organization of military
forces on either side was easily explainable and excusable upon the
plea of prudence and of a necessary preparation for conceivably
possible emergencies, and on both sides these preparations for war
served to arouse the fighting instincts of the populace and thus to
make war more and more obviously inevitable.
During the first forty days or so of Mr. Lincoln's administration
there was nothing done that was not in consonance with the Buchanan
program of peace and waiting. Nothing was undertaken of a more positive
character than the acts of the Buchanan rule. So far as proclamations
and professions and pledges of peaceful purpose were concerned there
was no change either for better or for worse.
In his inaugural address Mr. Lincoln outlined his policy by saying
of the administration that it aimed only at the preservation of the
Union. He said, "It will constitutionally maintain and defend itself.
In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall
be none unless it is forced upon the national authority. The power
confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property
and places belonging to the Government, and collect the duties and
imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will
be no invasion, no using of force against or among people anywhere. In
your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."
All this was very specious and to the Northern mind convincing, but
it ignored the fundamental fact that the seceding states claimed a
constitutional right to secede and that having exercised that asserted
right, they denied the right of the United States Government to "hold,
occupy and possess," forts, arsenals or custom houses within their
territory, or within that territory to "collect duties and imposts."
The very vitals of the question at issue were involved in that
assumption of right on the part of the Federal Government to impose
and enforce laws and imposts, and to assert and maintain rights of
property possession within the territories of states that had, as they
resolutely contended, taken themselves out of the Union by rigidly
constitutional methods.
It is not purposed here idly and uselessly to discuss this
constitutional question. It is only intended to show how it presented
itself to the minds of men on the one side and upon the other. To the
Northern mind, which had forgotten its own pleas for disunion and its
own claims of the right of any state to secede, Mr. Lincoln's declared
purpose seemed an altogether righteous and reasonable proposal of
governmental activity and necessary national self-assertion. To the
Southern mind, in which the traditional doctrine survived of the right
of any state to secede at will, it seemed a proposal of intolerable
aggression.
If the seceding states had acted within their constitutional right
in seceding, then they were no longer within the dominion or in any
remotest way subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Any
attempt on the part of that government to exercise jurisdiction or to
"collect duties and imposts" within their borders was a trespass upon
their independence, an affront to their dignity, an invasion of their
sovereignty, in brief an act of direct war upon them.
Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address, as the Southerners held, begged
the whole question at issue. It assumed that secession was an
unconstitutional nullity and that the seceding states were still in
the Union and still subject to its laws, its imposts and its duties.
That was the whole matter in dispute. If that assumption was correct
then it was permitted to him to use any force he might see fit to
employ with which to compel them to obedience. But if the assumption
was incorrect--if those seceding states had in fact constitutionally
withdrawn from the Union, as they contended that they had done--then he
had no more right to exercise authority, to enforce laws, to possess
"places and property" or to "collect duties and imposts" within their
boundaries than he had to do the same within the domains of Britain,
France or Germany. This was the very marrow of the question at issue.
Mr. Lincoln's words spoken in his inaugural address were meant to be
placative to Southern sentiment and to minister to that reconciliation
which from beginning to end was the sincerest desire of his soul. But
they were based upon a seemingly total misconception. They constituted
a refusal to recognize what the South held to be a fundamental fact.
Mr. Lincoln's placative words did not placate for the reason that
they completely ignored the Southern contention. They became instead,
directly offensive as an assertion of the wrongfulness of secession,
and its utter lack of constitutional authority.
His words, the men of the South thought, claimed either too much or
greatly too little.
All this was only a part and a small part of the fencing by which the
men in high place on either side sought in that troubled time to shift,
each to the others' shoulders, responsibility for the actual and brutal
beginning of a war which was clearly inevitable, and the occurrence of
which had been made steadily more and more a necessity by the events of
history during generations past.
In the meanwhile both sides were making every possible preparation for
a war that had not been declared, a war that both professed to regard
as unnecessary, a war for the outbreak of which each was determined
that the other and not itself should bear all the blame.
The Congress at Washington had adjourned at the beginning of March
without making any warlike appropriations whatsoever. Forty days of
Mr. Lincoln's administration had passed without the calling of a
regiment or a company or even a soldier into the field. Congress had
indeed passed a resolution declaring its purpose to avoid war and its
conviction that every possible concession should be made by Northern
sentiment in avoidance of that terrible catastrophe.
It had resolved:
"That the existing discontents among the Southern people, and the
growing hostility to the Federal Government among them, are greatly
to be regretted; and that whether such discontents and hostility are
without just cause or not, any reasonable proper and constitutional
remedies and additional and more specific guarantees of their peculiar
rights and interests, as recognized by the Constitution, necessary to
preserve the peace of the country and the perpetuity of the Union,
should be promptly and cheerfully granted."
But how much did this resolution signify? It was passed by more than
a two-thirds majority of a rump House of Representatives after the
Southern members of that body had withdrawn from it. It therefore
seemed to represent Northern and Republican sentiment. But the Senate
rejected it and it came to nothing. It was a resolve that concessions
should be made and that new guarantees should be given in the interest
of the Union's preservation. But, the Southerners pointed out, the
concessions were not made and the new guarantees were not given.
It was impossible, in fact, that these things should be done. It
was easy for Congress to resolve that "any reasonable, proper and
constitutional remedies and additional and more specific guarantees"
should be given, but quite another thing to secure the execution of
such a program. One house of Congress vetoed the action of the other
on every such resolution and both refused to put the guarantees
into legal form. Northern sentiment saw and resented in every such
proposition a suggestion of still further concession to that slave
power which Northern sentiment had come to abhor with all the loathing
that is possible to the human mind, and Northern sentiment would have
no part or lot in concession to a system which under compulsion of the
Constitution it might tolerate but to the perpetuation of which it
would on no account lend a hand.
On the other side the extremists of the South asked for no further
guarantees and trusted none that might be offered. They contended that
the guarantees of the Constitution itself had been nullified by the
laws of the Northern States; that every compromise had been broken;
that, as they insisted, Northern sentiment had openly and distinctly
approved of servile insurrection, with all the horror that it must
imply, as a means of abolishing slavery; and that there was no further
hope of reconciliation by virtue of paper guarantees which the Federal
Government had no adequate power to enforce.
The issue had, in fact, been made up and all attempts at compromise
were futile folly. The war to which the country's history and politics
for half a century past had been leading had at last come and the only
real question that remained to be settled was that of who should begin
the actual fighting. That detail was of no real importance.
The South bore its part in all this by-play and coquetry of endeavors
at reconciliation. It sent distinguished men as delegates to plead for
peace at Washington, either, as some of them urged, upon some basis of
compromise or, as others insisted, upon a governmental recognition of
secession as a right and a fact, the recognition of which would indeed
have furnished a peaceful remedy for ills otherwise irremediable, an
easy and peaceful way out of a controversy that otherwise threatened
a savage, brutal and peculiarly devastating war. But that remedy was
obviously and absurdly impossible of adoption in the circumstances then
existing.
Neither side was in the least degree disposed to accept or even
seriously to consider the peace proposals of the other. Neither being
willing to yield a single item of its contention, there was no ground
or chance of compromise. It was clearly understood upon both sides that
war was presently to come.
On both sides there was an active sharpening of swords and a diligent
rubbing up of guns that might prove serviceable in war.
At the South practically all the able-bodied young men were enlisted
in what were then called "volunteer companies," though it did not yet
appear in what cause they were supposed to be volunteering. They were
drilled and disciplined and made into something at least remotely
resembling soldiers. Their familiarity with firearms and their
habits of strenuous outdoor life fitted them for comparatively easy
transformation into troops.
At the North there was an equally active preparation for war. Among
other warlike initiatives a fleet was preparing for the relief of Fort
Sumter or at the least for a threatening manifestation off Charleston
harbor. It had every equipment--even to surf boats for use in enforced
landings--that such a fleet could require, and it presently sailed.
Neither mail nor telegraphic communication between the North and
the South had as yet been interfered with, and so every detail of
preparation made upon either side was instantly reported to the other.
These were the conditions in which the actual struggle approached.
When on the night after Christmas Major Anderson transferred his little
handful of men under cover of darkness from the hopelessly indefensible
works of Fort Moultrie to the seemingly much stronger position at Fort
Sumter, the Confederates clamorously contended that the change was a
violation of the Buchanan administration's promise to maintain the
military _status quo_. They seized upon the occurrence as an excuse for
that erection of batteries around the harbor which has already been
spoken of. In the meanwhile they courteously extended the hospitalities
of the city of Charleston to Major Anderson, freely permitting him to
send men ashore and to supply himself in the Charleston markets with
fresh vegetables, butter, eggs, milk and whatever else he needed for
the comfort of his command.
But when an attempt was made during the Buchanan administration to
provision Fort Sumter for a siege, the steamer _Star of the West_,
which carried the supplies, was forbidden to approach the fort and
compelled to put again to sea.
Then followed negotiations which were marked by all that suave and
gentle courtesy which characterizes the preliminary communications
between duelists who intend presently to shoot one another.
The state of South Carolina, claiming to be an independent sovereignty
and a member of a new and sovereign confederacy, courteously asked the
United States Government to withdraw its military force from Charleston
Harbor. The state represented that the military occupation of a
fortress within its domain by another sovereign power was derogatory
to the dignity and independence of the state. It courteously offered
adequate compensation to the United States for any property that might
be involved in the change but politely insisted that the United States
Government should cease to trespass upon the dignity of a sister nation.
To all this the Buchanan administration with equal courtesy replied,
declining to recognize in South Carolina the status it claimed as
an independent state, but seemingly at least promising the early
evacuation of Fort Sumter.
All this was "play for position" on both sides and it produced the
desired effect. It put South Carolina and the seceding states "right
upon the record." That is to say, it enabled them to avoid even the
appearance of recognizing the existence of Federal authority within
their borders and on the other hand it gave to the more or less
friendly administration of Mr. Buchanan the opportunity it desired to
finish its term without armed conflict and without the necessity of
assuming any positive and pronounced attitude toward secession.
But even after Mr. Lincoln came into office the clash of arms was
postponed. Neither side was as yet ready for it, and each earnestly
desired to throw upon the other the responsibility of precipitating a
conflict which was clearly inevitable and for which each must account
as best it could to that "opinion of mankind" to which the American
Declaration of Independence had been reverently addressed as an act of
"decent respect."
So for forty days or so after Mr. Lincoln assumed office there was
nothing done, except in the way of preparation for emergencies. In the
meanwhile Virginia still held aloof from the secession movement and
five other border states--the chief sources of that military strength
which resides in a food supply--were waiting for the word from the
mother state.
It began to be understood in South Carolina that something must be
done to compel Virginia to take her stand one way or the other. There
was little if any doubt that upon the abstract right of any state to
secede, Virginia stood firmly with the South. But her protest was
resolute against the contention that secession was at that time either
necessary or politic. It was necessary, therefore, to "force Virginia's
hand," as whist players say, to do something which might leave to that
state no choice but that between secession on her own part and consent,
on the other hand, to the doctrine that the National Government was
possessed of a right to coerce, and by military force to subdue, states
that had assumed to act upon what they claimed to be and what Virginia
freely recognized as the right of each state to withdraw from the Union
at its own good pleasure. It was plain that the war must be hurried
into being if the new Confederacy, composed exclusively of the cotton
states, was to ally Virginia and the other food-producing states of
the South with itself and thus secure any hope or even any chance of
success in its effort to maintain itself.
Accordingly General Beauregard, who was in command at Charleston, was
ordered to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter, and upon refusal to
reduce that work. This was a ridiculously easy task. But its execution
was a thing of momentous consequence.
Major Anderson, who commanded the fort with its mere handful of men,
was himself a man of Southern extraction, as were Farragut, George H.
Thomas, Winfield Scott and even Lincoln himself. But Anderson was a
soldier in the United States Army and while he freely declared that his
heart was not in a war against the South, he had no thought of failing
in his soldierly duty.
When on the eleventh of April, 1861, he was summoned to surrender, he
refused, as it became a brave officer to do. He knew perfectly well
that Beauregard had force enough and cannon enough and ammunition
enough to reduce a dozen such forts as that which he commanded, but in
that spirit which throughout the war animated every good soldier of
whatever rank in both armies, he refused to yield until such time as
physical force should overcome his powers of resistance and compel his
surrender. There was a relieving fleet in the offing, but, though it
drew near enough during the action for Major Anderson to salute it, it
rendered him no assistance and indeed made no attempt to do so.
Beauregard opened fire upon the fort at 4:20 A.M. on the twelfth of
April, from batteries located at every available range point. The
unfitness of the antiquated masonry work to endure a bombardment was
quickly and, to Major Anderson, disastrously demonstrated, but in
spite of all he heroically held out until on the next day his men
were literally driven from their guns by the smoke of the burning
quarters within the fortification. Unable to make further resistance
and obviously hopeless of assistance even from that fleet in the
offing which had been elaborately equipped and sent to effect his
reinforcement and rescue, he at last capitulated.
He was permitted to salute his flag before lowering it, to march his
command out of the fort with military honors, and to sail North with
his men.
Those were the mild-mannered, courteous, drawing-room days of war. The
butchery and brutality were to come later. Nobody had been killed by
the fire of either side, and nobody wounded. The courtesy which had
marked all relations between Major Anderson and the Carolinians was
maintained to the end. Major Anderson left Charleston as any honored
guest might have left a hospitable mansion in Charleston Neck after
entertainment, with the good wishes, the friendship, and the godspeed
of his hosts. Nothing could have been pleasanter or more exquisitely
courteous than this encounter and this parting. But it was the preface
to a war which sent brave men by scores of thousands to their graves,
desolated thousands of homes, North and South, made widows of loving
wives and orphans of unoffending children.
So far as the direct effect of the spectacular but bloodless
bombardment of Fort Sumter was concerned it failed of its purpose. Even
such an event did not prompt the Virginia convention, as had been hoped
and confidently anticipated, to adopt an ordinance of secession. On
the day after news of it was received in Richmond the representatives
of the mother state stood as resolutely as ever in opposition to a
secession program, which they deemed at once impolitic and unjustified
by anything in the situation of affairs.
But the bombardment accomplished its intended effect by indirection.
It gave Mr. Lincoln occasion to call for a volunteer army with which
to meet what had thus assumed the character of a war upon the United
States. As has been already related he called for seventy-five thousand
men and demanded of Virginia that she should furnish her proportional
part of that force. After many weeks of resolute resistance to what
the Virginians regarded as a policy of quixotic folly and certain
destruction, the Virginia convention on the seventeenth of April,
1861, adopted an ordinance of secession. From that hour war was on in
earnest, as both sides quite clearly understood.