A month has elapsed, and the administration has neither a domestic nor a
foreign policy. The administration must at once adopt and carry out a
novel, radical, and aggressive policy. It must cease saying a word about
slavery, and raise a great outcry about Union. It must declare war
against France and Spain, and combine and organize all the governments
of North and South America in a crusade to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.
This policy once adopted, it must be the business of some one
incessantly to pursue it. "It is not in my especial province," wrote Mr.
Seward; "but I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility." This
phrase, which is a key to the whole memorandum, enables the reader
easily to translate its meaning into something like the following:
After a month's trial, you, Mr. Lincoln, are a failure as President. The
country is in desperate straits, and must use a desperate remedy. That
remedy is to submerge the South Carolina insurrection in a continental
war. Some new man must take the executive helm, and wield the undivided
presidential authority. I should have been nominated at Chicago, and
elected in November, but am willing to take your place and perform your
duties.
Why William H. Seward, who is fairly entitled to rank as a great
statesman, should have written this memorandum and presented it to Mr.
Lincoln, has never been explained; nor is it capable of explanation. Its
suggestions were so visionary, its reasoning so fallacious, its
assumptions so unwarranted, its conclusions so malapropos, that it falls
below critical examination. Had Mr. Lincoln been an envious or a
resentful man, he could not have wished for a better occasion to put a
rival under his feet.
The President doubtless considered the incident one of phenomenal
strangeness, but it did not in the least disturb his unselfish judgment
or mental equipoise. There was in his answer no trace of excitement or
passion. He pointed out in a few sentences of simple, quiet explanation
that what the administration had done was exactly a foreign and domestic
policy which the Secretary of State himself had concurred in and helped
to frame. Only, that Mr. Seward proposed to go further and give up
Sumter. Upon the central suggestion that some one mind must direct, Mr.
Lincoln wrote with simple dignity:
"If this must be done, I must do it. When a general line of policy is
adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its being changed without
good reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still,
upon points arising in its progress I wish, and suppose I am entitled to
have, the advice of all the cabinet."
Mr. Lincoln's unselfish magnanimity is the central marvel of the whole
affair. His reply ended the argument. Mr. Seward doubtless saw at once
how completely he had put himself in the President's power. Apparently,
neither of the men ever again alluded to the incident. No other persons
except Mr. Seward's son and the President's private secretary ever saw
the correspondence, or knew of the occurrence. The President put the
papers away in an envelop, and no word of the affair came to the public
until a quarter of a century later, when the details were published in
Mr. Lincoln's biography. In one mind, at least, there was no further
doubt that the cabinet had a master, for only some weeks later Mr.
Seward is known to have written: "There is but one vote in the cabinet,
and that is cast by the President." This mastery Mr. Lincoln retained
with a firm dignity throughout his administration. When, near the close
of the war, he sent Mr. Seward to meet the rebel commissioners at the
Hampton Roads conference, he finished his short letter of instructions
with the imperative sentence: "You will not assume to definitely
consummate anything."
From this strange episode our narrative must return to the question of
Fort Sumter. On April 4, official notice was sent to Major Anderson of
the coming relief, with the instruction to hold out till the eleventh or
twelfth if possible; but authorizing him to capitulate whenever it might
become necessary to save himself and command. Two days later the
President sent a special messenger with written notice to the governor
of South Carolina that an attempt would be made to supply Fort Sumter
with provisions only; and that if such attempt were not resisted, no
further effort would be made to throw in men, arms, or ammunition,
without further notice, or unless in case of an attack on the fort.
The building of batteries around Fort Sumter had been begun, under the
orders of Governor Pickens, about the first of January, and continued
with industry and energy; and about the first of March General
Beauregard, an accomplished engineer officer, was sent by the
Confederate government to take charge of and complete the works. On
April 1 he telegraphed to Montgomery: "Batteries ready to open Wednesday
or Thursday. What instructions?"
At this point, the Confederate authorities at Montgomery found
themselves face to face with the fatal alternative either to begin war
or to allow their rebellion to collapse. Their claim to independence was
denied, their commissioners were refused a hearing; yet not an angry
word, provoking threat, nor harmful act had come from President Lincoln.
He had promised them peace, protection, freedom from irritation; had
offered them the benefit of the mails. Even now, all he proposed to do
was--not to send guns or ammunition or men to Sumter, but only bread and
provisions to Anderson and his soldiers. His prudent policy placed them
in the exact attitude described a month earlier in his inaugural; they
could have no conflict without being themselves the aggressors. But the
rebellion was organized by ambitious men with desperate intentions. A
member of the Alabama legislature, present at Montgomery, said to
Jefferson Davis and three members of his cabinet: "Gentlemen, unless you
sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back
in the old Union in less than ten days." And the sanguinary advice was
adopted. In answer to his question, "What instructions?" Beauregard on
April 10 was ordered to demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter, and, in
case of refusal, to reduce it.
The demand was presented to Anderson, who replied that he would evacuate
the fort by noon of April 15, unless assailed, or unless he received
supplies or controlling instructions from his government. This answer
being unsatisfactory to Beauregard, he sent Anderson notice that he
would open fire on Sumter at 4:20 on the morning of April 12.
Promptly at the hour indicated the bombardment was begun. As has been
related, the rebel siege-works were built on the points of the islands
forming the harbor, at distances varying from thirteen hundred to
twenty-five hundred yards, and numbered nineteen batteries, with an
armament of forty-seven guns, supported by a land force of from four to
six thousand volunteers. The disproportion between means of attack and
defense was enormous. Sumter, though a work three hundred by three
hundred and fifty feet in size, with well-constructed walls and
casemates of brick, was in very meager preparation for such a conflict.
Of its forty-eight available guns, only twenty-one were in the
casemates, twenty-seven being on the rampart _en barbette_. The garrison
consisted of nine commissioned officers, sixty-eight non-commissioned
officers and privates, eight musicians, and forty-three non-combatant
workmen compelled by the besiegers to remain to hasten the consumption
of provisions.
Under the fire of the seventeen mortars in the rebel batteries, Anderson
could reply only with a vertical fire from the guns of small caliber in
his casemates, which was of no effect against the rebel bomb-proofs of
sand and roofs of sloping railroad iron; but, refraining from exposing
his men to serve his barbette guns, his garrison was also safe in its
protecting casemates. It happened, therefore, that although the attack
was spirited and the defense resolute, the combat went on for a day and
a half without a single casualty. It came to an end on the second day
only when the cartridges of the garrison were exhausted, and the red-hot
shot from the rebel batteries had set the buildings used as officers'
quarters on fire, creating heat and smoke that rendered further defense
impossible.
There was also the further discouragement that the expedition of relief
which Anderson had been instructed to look for on the eleventh or
twelfth, had failed to appear. Several unforeseen contingencies had
prevented the assembling of the vessels at the appointed rendezvous
outside Charleston harbor, though some of them reached it in time to
hear the opening guns of the bombardment. But as accident had deranged
and thwarted the plan agreed upon, they could do nothing except
impatiently await the issue of the fight.
A little after noon of April 13, when the flagstaff of the fort had been
shot away and its guns remained silent, an invitation to capitulate with
the honors of war came from General Beauregard, which Anderson accepted;
and on the following day, Sunday, April 14, he hauled down his flag with
impressive ceremonies, and leaving the fort with his faithful garrison,
proceeded in a steamer to New York.