By Al Hemingway
Shortly after midnight on the morning of April 12, 1861, four men in a rowboat made their way across the pitch-black harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, toward an unfinished and architecturally insignificant masonry fort three miles out from the city where the harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. For three of the men, it was their second trip of the day to the pentagonal-shaped fort defiantly flying the Stars and Stripes above its ramparts.
A Warning to Major Anderson
Although the four men in the boat were self-professed gentlemen—three from Charleston high society, the fourth an aristocratic Virginian—this was no social call. They were there as emissaries of the newly fledged Confederate States of America, born the previous December inside the Carolina Institute Hall in Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession had been signed and the Palmetto State had become the first star on the Confederacy’s new national flag.
The men in the rowboat were flying a different flag at the moment, the white flag of truce. But if their visit was intended to be peaceable, their message most definitely was not. James Chesnut, Jr., Stephen D. Lee, Alexander R. Chisolm, and Roger A. Pryor clambered ashore at Fort Sumter that night to tell the base commander, Major Robert Anderson, that he had but one hour to surrender the fort and evacuate himself and his undersized garrison of 82 men—or else.
The Kentucky-born Anderson was in an unenviable and unprecedented situation. No state had ever seceded from the Union before; whether it was even legally possible for one to do so was a constitutional question beyond Anderson’s experience or expertise. He had arrived in Charleston the previous November, not long after the election of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th president of the United States had brought Charlestonians pouring into the streets to celebrate the much-hated Lincoln’s election—not out of joy for the “black Republican’s” victory, but because it seemed beyond doubt to presage the end of the Union.
The night after Christmas 1860, Anderson had ably transferred his men to Fort Sumter from the more vulnerable Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan’s Island. For the next three and a half months, he had resisted all demands from ardent South Carolinians to surrender Fort Sumter and leave the city. At the same time, he had bluntly informed Lincoln that, although he would strive to do his duty as a professional soldier, his heart was not in the incipient civil war he saw approaching like a hurricane on the western horizon.
Anderson was not alone in reading the signs. Storms clouds had been gathering for decades between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding states. The overwhelming victory in the Mexican War in 1847—a war that Lincoln, then a Whig congressman, had opposed—had opened up enormous new territory in the American Southwest. Proponents of slavery wanted to expand their “peculiar institution” into the new lands. Lincoln and other opponents of slavery just as adamantly opposed such a move. Two separate political compromises, in 1850 and 1854, had sought to address the issue by maintaining a tenuous equality between the regions. However, half a decade of internecine warfare between pro- and antislavery forces in “Bleeding Kansas” had sharpened the philosophical divide. In 1859, when abolitionist John Brown, a veteran of the Kansas warfare, led an ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to steal weapons and lead a slave revolt, the situation grew in intensity. Brown was quickly captured and hanged for what amounted to domestic terrorism, but many in the North saw him as a martyr to conscience. With the election of Lincoln in 1860, southern “Fire-eaters” called for immediate secession. Southerners distrusted Republicans like Lincoln, believing that they would meddle in their affairs, especially slavery, and ignore the related issue of state’s rights.
Nowhere was the cauldron of dissent more vocal than in South Carolina. And nowhere was the public outcry heard the louder than in the coastal city of Charleston. Even the ladies of the “Holy City” were excited about the prospects of succeeding. “The very air seemed to be charged with electricity,” wrote Claudine Rhett. “Flags fluttered in every direction, and the adjacent islands were converted into camping grounds. Companies drilled and paraded daily on every open square in the city, and the bands of music played nightly serenaded distinguished men, and made the old houses echo back the strains of ‘Dixie’ and the ‘Marseillaise.’”
Considerably less concerned about the volatile situation was outgoing President James Buchanan. Considered by many observers, then and now, as the country’s worst president, Buchanan was indecisive on the issue of slavery. In his final address to the Congress on December 3, 1860, he said that succession was illegal, but also that it was unlawful for the federal government to forcibly prevent any state from doing so.
On December 20, South Carolina became the first southern state to leave the Union. Six other states quickly followed suit, and the seven of them created the Confederate States of America. Less than a week later, three delegates from South Carolina—Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams, and James L. Orr—traveled to Washington to meet with Buchanan as quasi-official representatives of the new government. The trio of southern emissaries wanted to convey to Buchanan the message that South Carolina had no intention of attacking the military installations on the coast, “provided that no reinforcements should be sent, and the military status should be permitted to remain unchanged.” They also demanded the “delivery of the forts, magazines, lighthouses” to state officials.
Prior to the delegation meeting with the president, Anderson had performed the transfer of the garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, without first notifying Washington. First he ferried the women and children over to Fort Johnson, also located in the harbor. Anderson ordered three guns at Moultrie to fire, signaling the group to move to Sumter. When the rest of the garrison began loading their boats, Charleston officials thought they were sailing to Fort Johnson, as well. But when the residents observed the American flag waving in the breeze atop Fort Sumter, they realized that they had been duped.
South Carolina’s governor, Francis W. Pickens, an ardent supporter of the southern cause, was infuriated with Anderson’s surreptitious movement and immediately called for his surrender. Anderson, of course, refused. Soon, the Kentuckian’s name was vilified at the state convention, the legislature, and at public and private meetings. Many called him a traitor to the southern cause, because of his longtime relationship with the South.
Not only did Anderson’s clandestine actions enrage the South Carolinians, but they ruffled Secretary of War John B. Floyd’s feathers in Washington. Floyd claimed that the “solid pledges of the [U.S.] government” were all for naught, due to Anderson’s actions. He advised the president to vacate all U.S. troops from Charleston harbor. Buchanan steadfastly refused to withdraw the garrison from Fort Sumter, which created a furor within his cabinet. Floyd, who was under investigation on charges of corruption, resigned his post and returned to his native Virginia. He was later appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate Army.
Although he had a short tenure in office, Joseph Holt, Buchanan’s new secretary of war, approved of Anderson’s tactics. A fellow Kentuckian, he assured Anderson that supplies and reinforcements would be forthcoming. Meanwhile, as the commander of Fort Sumter peered out at the city of Charleston, he could see the unmistakable sights of war: Rebel gun batteries being erected to prepare for an attack on the stronghold. Militia commanders in charge of the Confederate forces that encircled Sumter had ordered gun emplacements on Fort Moultrie, Sullivan’s Island, Morris Island, and James Island. These batteries were poised to pummel the fort if the Federals did not surrender. Their impressive arsenal included 8-inch Columbiads, 10-inch mortars, and several 42-pounders.
Fort Sumter’s Shortcomings and Lack of Supply
Sumter itself was designed to house a garrison of about 650 men and 135 cannons that were strategically placed in a three tier-style of arrangement circling the fort. The pentagon-shaped structure was 170 to 190 feet in length, and was 50 feet in height; its walls were five feet thick. The primary purpose of the installation was to strengthen the defenses along the southern coast of the United States. The construction started in 1827 but was still not finished in December 1860. Even worse, approximately half of the guns had not been delivered because of Buchanan’s downsizing of the military during his time in office.
“Few guns were mounted, and these were chiefly on the lowest tier,” noted Sergeant James Chester of Company E, 1st U.S. Artillery. Chester complained that the openings cut into the walls of the fort for the guns had not been completed on the second tier, so that only the first and third tiers could be used. Union soldiers worked diligently to build up areas of the bastion that sorely needed it. Some continued to demonstrate a positive attitude, believing that they were a match for their adversaries. Chester, however, was a realist. He understood that the enemy had “unlimited labor and material” and that the occupants of Fort Sumter were handicapped by having access only to materials that had been stockpiled from years past.
Despite the shortcomings, Anderson was ordered “to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked you are to defend yourself to the last extremity.” Anderson did what he could. He told yet another South Carolina emissary, Colonel J. Johnston Pettigrew of the state militia, that although his (Anderson’s) sympathies were “entirely with the South,” he was sworn to do his duty as a United States officer and “cannot and will not go back.” He called his men to the parade ground, had the chaplain offer a prayer, and instructed the band to play “Hail Columbia.” The die was cast.
Anderson’s prayers seemed to be answered when he received a telegram on New Year’s Eve 1860 informing him that assistance was en route to South Carolina. Buchanan had become more adamant about resupplying the fort and protecting federal property. The outgoing chief executive did not want to return to his home state of Pennsylvania “by the light of burning effigies.” Despite the preceding four years, while Buchanan had waffled on the issues that divided the North and South, he was determined to end his term in office on a more positive note by showing the country that he had the backbone to stand up to the Confederates in Charleston harbor.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Anderson’s wife, Elizabeth, had ideas of her own about how to reinforce her husband. When originally assigned to Fort Sumter, Anderson had left his wife with their children in New York City, because she was in poor health. She knew that somewhere in the city was her husband’s “old and tried sergeant,” Peter Hart, who had served with the major during the Mexican War. After contacting all the Harts who resided in the city limits, she finally found him. Hart agreed to accompany Mrs. Anderson to Fort Sumter and serve under his old commander once again.
Against the wishes of her doctor, Elizabeth Anderson made the journey to Charleston with Hart. She wangled a meeting with Governor Pickens, asking for a pass for herself and Hart to visit her husband at the fort. Pickens gave her permission to go, but steadfastly refused to allow Hart to enter the fort. Angered by Pickens’s reply, Mrs. Anderson wrote a terse note back that said, “I shall take Hart with me, with or without a pass.” After reading the message, the governor acquiesced and issued a pass to Hart. On January 6, Mrs. Anderson, Hart, and a few personal friends were ferried by boat to the fort. Because of her weakened state, Elizabeth Anderson had to be carried off the vessel and taken by her husband. She had done what the U.S. government could not: reinforced Major Anderson, even if it was only with one man.
While Elizabeth Anderson was performing her personal mission to her husband, authorities in Washington were planning to bolster Anderson’s tiny command with additional troops and much-needed supplies. On January 9, the Star of the West, a New York-based merchant vessel, and Brooklyn, a heavily armed sloop, made their way into Charleston harbor. Both ships were carrying troops and supplies to Anderson’s beleaguered men at Fort Sumter. As the two ships neared Morris Island, students from the Citadel, who were manning the guns there, let loose a warning shot that carried across the bow of the Star of the West. With that, the vessel turned around and began to make her way back out to sea, but was hit three times before she reached the safety of the open sea.
Anderson’s command was downhearted at the abrupt turn of events; with provisions running low it was just a matter of time before they would be forced to surrender the fort. In Charleston, however, the population was jubilant. The following day, the Charleston Mercury thundered that “if that red seal of blood they want—blood they shall have, and blood enough to stamp it all in red. For, by the God of our fathers, the soil of South Carolina shall be free!” Senator Jefferson Davis agreed, stating that the operation to reinforce Sumter was ill-advised and that the garrison was “utterly incapable of holding” a major assault. He called the “management of the whole affair something worse than a crime—it was a blunder.”
Jefferson Davis: “Reduce the Fort”
On January 11, the State of South Carolina called for the immediate surrender of Fort Sumter. Stalling for time, Anderson responded that he did not possess the authority to hand over the fort to anyone. The following day, Pickens dispatched the state’s attorney general, I.W. Hayne, to deliver a message to President Buchanan that read in part, “The demand I have made of Major Anderson, and which I now make of you, is suggested because of my earnest desire to avoid the bloodshed which a persistence in your attempt to retain the possession of that fort will cause; and which will be unavailing to secure you that possession, but induce a calamity most deeply to be deplored.”
The Buchanan administration refused to budge. Pickens dispatched a party, led by the state’s attorney general, Andrew Gordon Magrath, to discuss surrender terms with Anderson. Although they tried to “persuade and alarm him,” their efforts were in vain. Anderson informed them that before he would turn Fort Sumter over to them, he would “fire the magazine and blow fort and garrison into the air.” Lines were hardening into cement on both sides.
Throughout February, demands for the fort’s capitulation continued to be sent to Anderson, who promptly denied them. Events continued apace. On February 18, Jefferson Davis resigned his seat in the Senate and was named president of the Confederate States of America. He tried to negotiate with the North by sending a peace commission, but that failed. On March 1, Davis appointed Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard commander of all Confederate troops in the Charleston area.
On March 4, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the United States. In a pointed nod to the people of the South, the president declared, “You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government, while I have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect,’ and defend’ it.” Lincoln said that violence and bloodshed would not be his policy unless forced on him by the acts of others. On that same day, he received a letter from Anderson saying that he had enough supplies to last approximately four to six weeks. After much haggling with his cabinet, especially from Secretary of State William E. Seward, who had been telling the Confederate delegates that the fort would soon be evacuated, Lincoln decided that he would make another attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter.
Lincoln met with General-in-Chief Winfield Scott and his aide, Chief Engineer John G. Totten. They informed him that 25,000 troops, a large armada, and months of training for the troops were needed before any relief expedition could commence. With the exception of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, most in Lincoln’s cabinet agreed with Scott’s dire assessment. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, who sided with Welles, introduced Lincoln to his brother-in-law, Gustavus V. Fox, who had already devised a plan of reinforcement that had been approved by Scott but ultimately dismissed by Buchanan.
On March 28, Scott recommended to Lincoln that both Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens, situated on the Florida panhandle near the Alabama border, be abandoned. Lincoln disagreed and informed Fox to proceed with his plan. As the resupply mission was nearing completion, Lincoln dispatched State Department clerk Robert S. Chew to deliver a personal message to Governor Pickens, stating that supply ships would be entering Charleston harbor to deliver provisions to the garrison at Sumter. Pickens received the note on April 8 and immediately forwarded the information to Davis, who had just relocated the capital of the Confederacy to Richmond after Virginia seceded from the Union. After some discussion, Davis sent word to demand the fort’s surrender one more time on April 10. If Anderson did not comply, Davis ordered a bombardment to begin on April 12.
Beauregard, once again, asked Anderson to surrender of the fort. Sadly, the major answered, “We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war, which I see is to be thus commenced. Gentlemen, if you do not batter us to pieces, we shall be starved out in a few days.”
Beauregard made one last attempt, sending the four emissaries—Lee, Chesnut, Chisolm, and Pryor—back to Fort Sumter after midnight on April 12. While the messengers waited outside the fort, Anderson conferred with his senior officers. A Union relief fleet sat anchored just outside Charleston harbor, bearing much-needed food for the besieged defenders. Lincoln, master politician that he was, had maneuvered the South into either allowing the fort to be resupplied—in which case it could hold out indefinitely—or else firing the first shots of the war. The visitors at Fort Sumter had already warned Anderson which course the Confederacy would take. Anderson, playing for time, informed the southerners that he would evacuate the fort by noon on April 15, unless he heard otherwise. Deeply moved, he shook hands with the four visitors, telling them that “if we do not meet again in this world, I hope we may meet in the next.”
Little did Anderson know, but Lincoln’s telegram informing him of a resupply mission had been intercepted by the Confederates. Fearing the additional firepower from the man o’ wars in Charleston harbor, Davis told Beauregard to “reduce the fort.” Ironically, Beauregard would order his artillerymen to begin the bombardment on Fort Sumter early the next morning against his former artillery instructor at West Point.
At precisely 4:30 am on April 12, the Civil War began. The first shot, fired from Fort Johnson at the tip of James Island below Charleston, crashed into the northeast parapet of the fort, directly above the head of sleeping Federal Captain Abner Doubleday. “A ball lodged in the magazine wall and by the sound seemed to bury itself in the masonry about a foot from my head, in very unpleasant proximity to my right ear,” he would later write. Doubleday wasted no time in leaving his quarters. Coolly, he and the other officers sat down to a “sumptuous” breakfast before Doubleday took his detachment to the fort’s casemates to return fire on the Confederate guns. “Their missiles were exceedingly destructive to the upper exposed position of the work,” wrote Doubleday, “but no essential injury was done to the lower casemates which sheltered us.”
A lank, white-haired old Virginian named Edmund Ruffin, who was visiting Charleston at the time, claimed credit for firing the war’s first shot. The 67-year-old former farmer and ardent secessionist had gone to bed that night without taking off his shoes and socks so that he would not be late when the word came to commence firing. Ruffin lit the fuse to a 64-pounder Columbiad on Cummings Point. (Unregenerate Rebel to the end, Ruffin would kill himself after the war rather than submit to domination by what he termed “the perfidious, malignant, and vile Yankee race.”)
The 47 Rebel cannons and mortars surrounding Fort Sumter began firing on the bastion. Once they got their range, shot and shell shook the structure like an earthquake. As one Charleston resident put it, “The nervous strain is awful.” The barrage increased in tempo that “woke the echoes from every nook and corner of the harbor.” “All along the water fronts and from all the forts,” said Confederate soldier D. Augustus Dickert, “a perfect sheet of flame flashed out, a deafening roar, a rumbling, deadening sound, and the war was on.”
The residents of Charleston, South Carolina, rushed onto the streets and porches of their homes or climbed to their rooftops to catch a better glimpse of the shells exploding over the fort. Many scurried down to the wharfs and battery to watch the cannonade reduce the bastion to rubble. Men cursed and ladies prayed as the bombardment maintained its intensity.
“The women were wild there on the housetops,” wrote Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of Confederate emissary James Chesnut, in her diary. “Prayers came from the women, and imprecations from the men. And then a shell would light up the scene. We watched up there, and everybody wondered that Fort Sumter did not fire a shot.” In the luxurious Mills House on Charleston’s Battery, the well-born, 38-year-old South Carolina matron was lying in bed, sleepless and on edge, when she heard “the heavy booming of a cannon.” Throwing on a dressing gown and shawl, she rushed to the rooftop with her friends to watch the shells explode against the pre-dawn sky. Mary Chesnut made a mental note to “try & remember every thing about that wonderful siege & write it as soon as I have leisure.” How well she would keep that vow not even she could guess.
One area that was particularly hit hard was the barracks. The wooden building was an easy target and soon was ablaze from the incoming projectiles. The soldiers quickly put out the fire before it consumed the entire structure. Inside the masonry structure, shells from the outlying batteries “went screaming over Sumter as if an army of devils were swooping around it,” according to Chester. At first, the soldiers inhabiting the fort assembled along the ramparts to watch the fireworks. When shots and shells came precariously close, they hurried down below to the bomb-proof shelters to await orders.
Anderson did not return fire until about 7 am, when Doubleday fired the first shot for the Union side, a 32-pounder Parrott gun aimed at Morris Island. The shell landed among the sandbags protecting the gun emplacements. The round was retrieved by the Confederates and forwarded to George P. Kane, the chief of police in Baltimore, a known southern sympathizer.
Both sides fired upon each other throughout the day. The Confederate batteries, because of their abundance of ammunition, kept up the pressure at a more sustained tempo. Even though the heat and humidity became more oppressive as the day wore on, the Union cannons answered their firing with shots of their own. Although the fort was well supplied with shells, they were short of primers and cartridge bags. Some of the men were detailed to produce makeshift ones from old woolen shirts and socks—even Major Anderson’s socks were sacrificed to the cause.
Many on the Union side were angered that their shots were not doing any damage to the batteries firing at them. Several of the crews were especially mad at the crowd of curious civilians watching from Moultrie Island. With no officer present, the men secretly fired two rounds at the group, with both shells skipping over the onlookers’ heads and smashing into the Moultrie House behind them. No one was killed or injured during the exchange, but the inquisitive onlookers hurried off in a “rather undignified manner,” one Federal noted with satisfaction.
The Union guns fell silent as night descended. The Rebel cannons kept up the bombardment at 15-minute intervals, if not to inflict any serious damage, then at least to keep the sleepless defenders in a nervous state. Many in the fort were understandably anxious for the fleet that would resupply them, although the sandbar that stretched across Charleston harbor could prove to be a formidable obstacle. Said Chester with commendable understatement, the night “was one of great anxiety.”
The next day, Confederate gunners wasted no time in resuming their bombardment of Fort Sumter, commencing fire as soon as the sun rose. Soon, the officer’s quarters were in flames “yielding pungent piney smoke.” By late morning, one-fifth of the structure was on fire. The thick, acrid smoke permeated the enclosure, making breathing very difficult. Some soldiers placed handkerchiefs over their mouths to escape the suffocating smoke. Others took refuge near the gun portals where fresh air was blowing in. Luckily for the men, a strong wind blowing that day lessened their discomfort.
In early afternoon, a Confederate round splintered the fort’s flag pole, causing it to fall to the ground. Seeing this, soldiers and citizens began to cheer loudly. Inside the fort, Peter Hart, Anderson’s devoted sergeant, nailed the Stars and Stripes to another staff and refastened it to the pole. Seeing the flag go down, Colonel Louis T. Wigfall, a former senator from Texas, seized the opportunity to make history. Acting without any authority but his own, Wigfall rowed out to the fort with a small landing party to demand its surrender. With shells exploding around them, the group made its way into Fort Sumter by squeezing through one of the gun embrasures. Wigfall was waving a sword with a white handkerchief tied to it.
Wigfall asked to speak to Anderson, who was quickly summoned. As they were discussing surrender terms, an errant shell exploded within 10 paces of them. The party quickly found safety in one of the fort’s casemates. Wigfall convinced Anderson of the futility of defending Fort Sumter. The major agreed, asking only that he be allowed to salute the flag when it was lowered for the last time and replaced by a white bed sheet signifying surrender. During the 34-hour bombardment, the Confederate batteries had fired an estimated 4,000 rounds without inflicting any casualties. The Union cannons had failed to harm anyone, either.
The following morning, as the garrison was preparing to board a transport that would take them out to the Federal ships beyond the bar, 50 howitzers were readied to fire a last 100-shot salute to the colors. Unfortunately, one of the guns exploded prematurely, killing Union Private Daniel Hough and wounding five other soldiers. Hough had the dubious distinction of becoming the first casualty of the Civil War. Anderson cancelled the rest of the salute and left the fort with the tattered 33-star flag tucked under his arm. He and his men marched down to the wharf to board the steamer that would take them out of harm’s way. As they passed silently out of the harbor, the watching Confederates lining the beachfront removed their hats in silent salute. There was no cheering.
Anderson was given a hero’s welcome when he returned with his wife to New York City. Plagued by poor health, he left active military service in October 1863. He was appointed a major general in February 1865. Two months later, he would return to Fort Sumter and triumphantly raise the original flag over the now-crumbling ruins of the fort. Between his visits, there would be many more casualties—hundreds of thousands more—after Private Hough’s accidental demise on that long-ago Sunday afternoon in Charleston harbor.
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