Dixie Betrayed (6 page)

“It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination,” bellowed
Lincoln, when he arose to deliver his inaugural address. After a tedious exploration of the standoff of North versus South,
he spoke to the secessionists: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave,
to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched,
as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
⁶

But the angels would offer no solutions on that day. Rather, the Yankees faced a growing set of problems, and one in particular
that seemed promising to the South was a possible power struggle between Lincoln and Seward. An experienced New York politician
who had been chosen by Lincoln as secretary of state, the wily Seward exceeded his authority right away under the guise of
helping the lesser Lincoln with valuable advice and counsel. In a memo titled “Some thoughts for the President’s consideration,”
Seward suggested Lincoln alter the platform of opposition to the Confederacy, changing the prime question from the allowance
of slavery to one of Union or disunion. He also asked if he could effectively act as a prime minister in approaching the Confederacy
and carrying out Lincoln’s orders. This might have opened up an avenue of negotiation with the South, but it would also have
granted Seward an inordinate amount of power. Lincoln would have no part of it. He, not Seward, would direct the nation, the
president informed his startled secretary of state.

As Lincoln and Seward parried, the Virginia State Convention met in Richmond. If Virginia would enter the Confederacy, all
knew it would become the largest and most important state in the compact because of its location. In Montgomery, as everywhere
else in the South, hopes were high. As they waited for word from Richmond, Varina Davis set about to create a new social Confederacy.
She held a levee at the Exchange Hotel and established a regular schedule of receptions that would be attended by the social
elite of Montgomery as well as Confederate officials and their wives. Bonding among the new South came easily, and Jefferson
Davis himself found time to attend most of the parties. “Playing Mrs. President of this small Confederacy [was] slow work
after leaving Washington,” Varina’s friend and confidant Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote of the First Lady’s attitude toward her
new role.
⁷
(Chesnut, wife of South Carolina congressman James Chesnut Jr., was a native Charlestonian who started keeping what would
become the most celebrated diary of the Confederacy.)

It was inevitable that discussions at these social gatherings eventually became political. To almost everyone the reason for
war seemed to come down to “preserving our way of life.” But state rights philosophy often seemed a veneer that covered local
conceptions of what “our way of life” actually meant. Money, politics, and control seethed underneath, and with the loss of
power in Washington and the potential loss of billions in property (slaves) looming overhead, preserving the way of life meant
stirring the collective patriotism of the New South—as well as creating fissures within.

Davis knew his whole political existence and that of his colleagues had been built around state rights as supreme. To have
a chance at winning the new war, however, he would need sweeping, central powers—both organizationally and militarily. State
rights had allowed sovereign states to secede and determine their own destiny without consultation with other states. But
now the Confederate States of America needed to act as one.

Davis felt that in order to have any chance at all, he needed to implement a five-part strategy. First, he would need to build
an integrated and well-trained army for the defense of the Confederacy rather than depending on state militias controlled
by the governors. The state forces had little uniformity and coordination from state to state, and they depended on local,
limited resources in terms of leadership, manpower, money, arms, supplies, subsistence, manufacturing, and transportation,
all of which probably could have been better procured and allocated on a national level.

Second, Davis would need to make the most of international politics. A national, Confederate effort would stand a much better
chance of obtaining recognition from Britain or France than could the accomplishments of individual states. Davis felt that
a comprehensive national plan for the export of cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar could build credit and trade so as to produce
economic stability and recognition.

Third, a national effort would be required to build a navy in order to break the blockade of Southern seaports, open the rivers
to commerce, and disrupt Yankee shipping on the high seas.

Fourth, Davis realized that in order to win any war against Lincoln, the South would need to organize massive raids that would
threaten Union strongholds such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg. Such offensive
moves would cause the Yankees to tire of their “aggressive” warfare, he thought, and yearn for an armistice. It would be far
more practical to wage war against the United States from Virginia than from Alabama. But on April 4, a Thursday, the convention
rejected—by a vote of eighty-nine to forty-five—a motion to pass an ordinance of secession.

Fifth, Davis desperately needed to believe that the North was only marginally interested in the slavery issue. Although the
vast majority of Yankees certainly didn’t go to war to end slavery, and many were as racist as the most racist Southerners,
Davis risked the question. He hoped that over time most Northerners would decide a war over slaves was not worth the effort.

Whatever the Yankees thought, there was no turning back now. On Saturday, April 6, Lincoln sent a message to South Carolina’s
governor, Francis Pickens, informing him that the Federal fort in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter, would be resupplied with
provisions, but no arms. Lincoln also stated that if there was no resistance from the South Carolina militia, the Yankees
would not reinforce the fort with more troops or weaponry. It was an aggressive move, but after vigorous debate, the infant
Confederate government ordered Brig. Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard to stop any Yankee supply mission, even if it
meant firing on the fort. Influenced by the Confederate Congress, Jefferson Davis had appointed Beauregard, the first brigadier
general in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, to supervise the military district around Charleston. One of the
most colorful military men of the day, Beauregard was short and slight, bristled with energy, and was expertly trained in
a wide variety of subjects. Not only was Beauregard a superb engineer, but he had also been trained in artillery under none
other than Robert Anderson, the current commander of Sumter. Beauregard was so liked within the War Department that he had
been appointed superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in January 1861, an assignment he was relieved of
a few days later when his Southern sympathies became starkly clear. With his widespread experience and general popularity—with
nearly everyone except Davis—Beauregard was destined to become the first great Southern hero of the conflict.

Beauregard received the news on April 10. By this time the tension among Charlestonians, among Anderson and his men in the
fort, and among patriotic Southerners and Northerners had reached a fever pitch. During the first week of April, a large crowd
gathered at Charleston’s waterfront battery. Anderson and his little garrison sat inside the fort and waited. Surrounding
them, scattered about the city and in various forts and batteries in the harbor, were more than six thousand secessionists
itching for a fight.
⁸

Not all Charlestonians agreed with the Confederate response. James Louis Petigru, a prominent attorney and statesman, said
that South Carolina was too small to be a nation and too large for an insane asylum.
⁹
But the majority of residents felt wronged by the North and saw no other way to react to Lincoln and the rest of the Yankees
than to fight. Virginian Roger Atkinson Pryor, a young lawyer, editor, and politician, gave a rousing speech in Charleston
on April 10. “I thank you especially that you have annihilated this accursed Union, reeking with corruption and insolent with
excess of tyranny,” he said. “Thank God! It is blasted with the lightning wrath of an outraged and indignant people.”
¹⁰

Advised to surrender by the local South Carolina militia and by representatives of the Confederate government, Anderson would
not budge. Instead he drew up a formal reply. “I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication demanding
the evacuation of this fort,” he wrote, “and to say, in reply thereto, that it is a demand with which that I regret that my
sense of honor, and of my obligations to my Government, prevent my compliance.”
¹¹
Informally, Anderson told his potential enemies he was running low on supplies and that he would probably be starved out
in a few days if the Southern guns didn’t “batter us to pieces.” Men inside the fort rolled out powder kegs, worked on the
guns, and watched the various positions of Confederate weapons facing them, trying not to expose themselves on the parapets.
Night fell over the fort with the stars overhead and the gleam of lights on the horizon in Charleston. Inside the fort Anderson
had no oil for lamps, and so the three-story brick fortress stood in near-total darkness.

Early on the morning of April 12—around 1:30 a.m.—the fort’s officers were awakened by a boat bearing a white flag. Four emissaries
came: James Chesnut, Stephen D. Lee, Alexander R. Chisholm, and Roger A. Pryor. These aides brought a letter suggesting that
if Anderson agreed to evacuate the fort at a stated time without firing on Confederate forces, the transfer of the fort could
be accomplished bloodlessly. Anderson stated he would abandon Sumter by noon on April 15 only if his command and flag would
not be fired on and unless otherwise instructed by the Lincoln government. By 3:20 a.m. Chesnut and Lee concluded the terms
were not acceptable—they wanted the Yankees out of South Carolina immediately—and that the fort would be fired on beginning
in one hour. “By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States,”
wrote Chesnut and Lee, “we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one
hour from this time.”
¹²
If they never again met in this world, God grant that they may meet in the next, Anderson replied. The emissaries then withdrew.

Within the fort, sleep was out of the question. “We arose and dressed,” wrote Union officer Samuel Wylie Crawford, “and before
our arrangements were completed, the firing began.”
¹³
It was almost exactly 4:30 a.m. on April 12 when it started. The great honor of firing the first shot of the war, coveted
by officers at Fort Johnson, had been offered to the fiery secessionist Roger Pryor, who had retreated to that point by 4
a.m. Oddly, however, he turned down the offer, later saying, “I could not fire the first gun of the war.” The first shot,
a ten-inch mortar shell sent as a signal round to activate the other batteries, was fired by the fort’s commander, Capt. George
S. James. “A flash as of distant lightning in the direction of Mount Pleasant, followed by the dull roar of a mortar, told
us that the bombardment had begun,” James Chester, a Federal soldier, wrote.
¹⁴
In a few minutes’ time, the sudden flashes and a surprising number of projectiles, along with the acrid, sulfurous smell
of gunpowder and sight of wafting smoke, arced over the fort. After several hours, particularly after dawn, most of the batteries
gained an effective range and started spitting shells and balls into the fort with frightening accuracy. In a variety of locations,
some Southerners stoked hot-shot furnaces to heat their iron balls into fire starters, hoping to ignite Sumter’s wooden barracks.
Bricks were smashed, and splinters of wood, brick dust, and mortar chunks cascaded into the air. The soldiers scattered and
took cover. “A ball from Cummings’s Point lodged in the magazine wall,” wrote Union officer Abner Doubleday of the first moments
of the war, “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.”
¹⁵
What had been one of the most magnificent fortifications in North America was disintegrating into a pile of rubble.

The fire from Southern guns increased in accuracy and frequency after daybreak, when a breeze carried the fumes and sounds
of war more effectively into the city. Observers watched the spectacle with amazement as the night turned into day. The youthful
Confederacy had struck its first blow.

With such a small amount of ammunition available, Anderson had no reason to react quickly. After breakfasting on a small amount
of farina, some of the Federals mounted a response using several cannon, but only a few guns were brought to bear. Doubleday
fired the first Yankee cannon of the war. Crawford reported knocking out a gun in the floating battery. But the volume of
shells being fired at Sumter was magnificent; it already had ignited a small fire in the wood-framed quarters and knocked
away a chimney.

During the afternoon, the Confederate bombardment of Sumter continued without pause, raining shot and shell into and over
the fort. Some of Anderson’s soldiers were wounded slightly by flying debris; most were unscathed, but the fort’s walls were
becoming pocked with hits and cracks, and brick dust was accumulating on the parade. Pvt. John Carmody tested the Rebels at
Fort Moultrie by sneaking up to the parapet and firing the heavier guns in quick succession at the fort; this only prompted
the Confederates into returning a heavy fire onto Sumter. With the approach of nightfall, the firing from Confederate batteries
lessened. Amazingly, there had been no deaths on either side.