Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (56 page)

The garrison at Fort Moultrie was not commanded by a Yankee, however. Major Robert Anderson was a Kentuckian, a former slaveowner who sympathized with the South but remained loyal to the flag he had served for thirty-five years. A man haunted by a tragic vision, Anderson wanted above all to avert a war that would divide his own family as well as his state and nation. Yet he knew that if war came, it was likely to start on the spot where he stood. Carolina hotspurs were straining at the leash; if they attacked, honor and his orders would require him to resist. Once the flag was fired upon and blood shed, there would be no stopping the momentum of war.

Like Anderson, President Buchanan keenly desired to prevent such a calamity—at least until he left office on March 4. One way to forestall a clash, of course, was to withdraw the garrison. Though urged to do so by three southern members of his cabinet, Buchanan refused to go this far. He did promise South Carolina congressmen on December 10 not to send the reinforcements Anderson had requested. In return, South Carolina pledged not to attack Anderson while negotiations for transfer of the forts were going on. The Carolinians also understood Buchanan to have agreed not to change the military status quo at Charleston in any way.
⁶⁵

While Buchanan dithered, Anderson acted. Interpreting ambiguous orders from the War Department as giving him authority to move his command from weak Fort Moultrie to powerful Fort Sumter if necessary to deter an attack, Anderson did so with stealth and skill after dark on the evening of December 26. Having made this move to preserve the peace, Anderson awoke next morning to find himself a hero in the North for thumbing his nose at the arrogant Carolinians and a villain to angry southerners who branded the occupation of Sumter as a violation of Buchanan's pledge. "You are today the most popular man in the nation," wrote a Chicagoan to Anderson. Leverett Saltonstall of Boston praised Anderson as the
"one true man"
in the country. "While you hold Fort Sumter, I shall not despair of our noble, our glorious Union." But the
Charleston Mercury
charged that Anderson's "gross breach of faith" had inaugurated civil war, while Jefferson Davis rushed to the White House to berate a "dishonored" president.
⁶⁶

The harried Buchanan almost succumbed to southern insistence that he must order the garrison back to Moultrie. But he knew that if he did so, he and his party would lose their last shred of respect in the North. A prominent Democrat in New York reported that "Anderson's course is universally approved and if he is recalled or if Sumter is surrendered . . . Northern sentiment will be unanimous in favor of hanging Buchanan. . . . I am not joking—Never have I known the
entire people

65
. Nevins,
Emergence
, II, 347–50, 357–58; Catton,
Coming Fury
, 145–46; Elbert B. Smith,
The Presidency of James Buchanan
(Lawrence, Kansas, 1975), 169–70.

66
. Northern statements and
Charleston Mercury
quoted in William A. Swanberg,
First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter
(New York, 1957), 136, 108; Davis quoted in Smith,
Buchanan
, 179.

more unanimous on any question. We are ruined if Anderson is disgraced or if Sumter is given up."
⁶⁷
A cabinet reshuffle also stiffened Buchanan's backbone. The southern members and one infirm Yankee resigned during December and early January. Into their places stepped staunch unionists, especially Secretary of War Joseph Holt (a Kentuckian), Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton, and Secretary of State Jeremiah Black. Stanton and Black drafted for Buchanan a reply to the South Carolina commissioners rejecting their demand for Sumter. Buoyed by this new experience of firmness, Buchanan went further—he approved a proposal by General-in-Chief Scott to reinforce Anderson.

In an effort to minimize publicity and provocation, Scott sent the reinforcements (200 soldiers) and supplies on the unarmed merchant vessel
Star of the West
. Bungling marred the whole enterprise, however. Word of the mission leaked to the press, while the War Department failed to get notice of it to Anderson, so that the garrison at Sumter was about the only interested party that lacked advance knowledge of the
Star of the West
's arrival at the harbor entrance January 9. South Carolina artillery fired on the ship and scored one hit before her civilian captain, discretion eclipsing valor, turned around and headed out to sea. These could have been the opening shots of a civil war. But they were not—because Anderson did not fire back. Lacking information and orders, he did not want to start a war on his own responsibility. So the guns of Sumter remained silent.
⁶⁸

Wrath in both North and South rose almost to the bursting point. But it did not burst. Despite mutual charges of aggression, neither side wanted war. Secessionists from other states quietly warned South Carolinians to cool down lest they provoke a conflict before the new Confederacy was organized and ready. A tacit truce emerged whereby the Carolinians left the Sumter garrison alone so long as the government did not try again to reinforce it. A similar (and explicit) arrangement prevailed at Fort Pickens—where, in contrast to Sumter, the navy could have landed reinforcements on the island at any time well out of range of southern guns.

Fort Pickens, however, remained something of a sideshow. The spotlight of history focused on Charleston and Fort Sumter. Anderson and

67
. Samuel L. M. Barlow to William M. Browne, Dec. 29, 1860, Barlow Papers. See also Stampp,
And the War Came
, 70–79.

68
. The best accounts of this incident are Catton,
Coming Fury
, 176–81, and Swanberg,
First Blood
, 144–49.

his men became in northern eyes the defenders of a modern Thermopylae. James Buchanan and Governor Francis Pickens of South Carolina handed the fate of these men over to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. The new Confederate president sent another trio of commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the transfer of Forts Sum-ter and Pickens to his government. He also sent newly commissioned General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, a Louisianian, to take command of the thousands of militia and several dozen big seacoast guns and mortars ringing Charleston harbor and pointing at the lonely soldiers inside Fort Sumter.

This was the situation when Lincoln learned on March 5 that the garrison was running short of supplies. The new president faced some hard choices. He could scrape together every available warship and soldier to shoot their way into the bay with supplies and reinforcements. But this would burden him with the onus of starting a war. It would divide the North and unite the South including most of the not-yet-seceded states. Or Lincoln could prolong peace and perhaps keep the upper South in the Union by withdrawing the garrison and yielding Sumter. But this too would divide the North, demoralize much of the Republican party, perhaps fatally wreck his administration, constitute an implicit acknowledgment of the Confederacy's independence, and send a signal to foreign governments whose diplomatic recognition the Confederacy was earnestly seeking. Or Lincoln could play for time, hoping to come up with some solution to preserve this vital symbol of sovereignty without provoking a war that would divide his friends and unite his enemies. Lincoln had six weeks at the outside to find a solution, for by then Anderson's men would be starved out of Sumter. These pressures sent the untried president to a sleepless bed with a sick headache more than once during those six weeks.
⁶⁹

Lincoln's dilemma was made worse by conflicting counsels and cross purposes within his government. General Scott said that reinforcement was now impossible without a large fleet and 25,000 soldiers. The government had neither the ships nor the men. Scott's advice to pull out

69
. This and the following paragraphs on Lincoln and Fort Sumter—one of the most thoroughly studied questions in American history—are based on a variety of sources including Catton,
Coming Fury
, 271–325; Swanberg,
First Blood
, 219–332; Richard N. Current,
Lincoln and the First Shot
(Philadelphia, 1963); Kenneth M. Stampp, "Lincoln and the Strategy of Defense in 1861,"
JSH
, 11 (1945), 297–323; Nevins,
War
, I, 30–74; Potter,
Impending Crisis
, 570–83; Randall,
Lincoln the President
, I, 311–50; and Nicolay and Hay,
Lincoln
, III, 375–449, IV, 1–63.

swayed the secretaries of war and navy. Seward also concurred. He wanted to give up Sumter for political as well as military reasons. Such a gesture of peace and good will, he told Lincoln, would reassure the upper South and strengthen unionists in Confederate states. Seward was playing a deep and devious game. In line with his aspirations to be premier of this administration, he established independent contact through an intermediary with the Confederate commissioners. On his own authority, and without Lincoln's knowledge, Seward passed the word to these commissioners that Sumter would be yielded. He also leaked this news to the press. Within a week of Lincoln's inauguration, northern papers carried "authoritative" stories that Anderson's men would be pulled out.

Lincoln had made no such decision—though the nearly unanimous advice of those who were paid to advise him nearly persuaded him to do so. But what then would become of his inaugural pledge to "hold, occupy, and possess" federal property? At the very least he could reinforce Fort Pickens; on March 12, General Scott issued orders for that purpose.
⁷⁰
When Lincoln polled his cabinet on March 15 concerning Sumter, however, five of the seven secretaries recommended evacuation. A sixth, Chase, advised resupplying the garrison only if it could be done without risking war. Montgomery Blair alone wanted to hold on to the fort whatever the risk. He believed that instead of encouraging southern unionists, surrender would discourage them. Only "measures which will inspire respect for the power of the Government and the firmness of those who administer it" could sustain them, said Blair. To give up the fort meant giving up the Union.
⁷¹

Lincoln was inclined to think so, too. And Blair offered the president more than supportive advice. He introduced Lincoln to his brother-in-law Gustavus V. Fox, a thirty-nine-year-old Massachusetts businessman and former navy lieutenant. Fox was the first of many such men who would surge into prominence during the next four years: daring, able, fertile with ideas for doing things that the creaking old military establishment

70
. Like so much else in the crisis of the forts, the first attempt to reinforce Pickens was also bungled. The naval captain on the Pickens station refused to carry out the order, which had been sent to the army officer commanding the troops on shipboard, because the order was not signed by the secretary of the navy. The captain cited his previous orders not to reinforce so long as the Confederates refrained from attacking Pickens. When Lincoln learned on April 6 of this foul-up, it may have influenced his final decision to send supplies to Fort Sumter.

71
. Excerpts from the written opinions of the seven secretaries are printed in
CWL
, IV, 285.

said could not be done. Fox proposed to send a troop transport escorted by warships to the bar outside Charleston harbor. Men and supplies could there be transferred to tugs or small boats which could cross the bar after dark for a dash to Sumter. Warships and the Sumter garrison would stand by to suppress attempts by Confederate artillery to interfere.

It might just work; in any case, Lincoln was willing to think about it. For he was now hearing from the constituency that had elected him. Many Republicans were outraged by reports that Sumter was to be surrendered. "
HAVE WE A GOVERNMENT
?" shouted newspaper headlines. "The bird of our country is a debilitated chicken, disguised in eagle feathers," commented a disgusted New York lawyer. "Reinforce Fort Sumter at all hazards!" ran a typical letter from a northern citizen. "If Fort Sumter is evacuated, the new administration is done forever," declared another.
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Even Democrats called for reinforcement of the "gallant band who are defending their country's honor and its flag in the midst of a hostile and traitorous foe." The prolonged uncertainty was stretching nerves to the breaking point. "The Administration
must have a policy of action,"
proclaimed the
New York Times
. "Better almost anything than additional suspense," echoed other northern papers. "The people want
something
to be decided on [to] serve as a rallying point for the abundant but discouraged loyalty of the American heart."
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