The Cannons Roar: Fort Sumter and the Start of the Civil War—An Oral History

PRELUDE

Blaming Major Anderson

March 4, 1861

Major Robert Anderson stood on the top of one of the walls at Fort Sumter, the unfinished federal military installation in Charleston Harbor, on the morning of March 4, 1861, and adjusted his spyglass. Once in focus, he found the moving figure of General P. G. T. Beauregard, his old student and close friend at West Point (Beauregard graduated second in his class in 1838), directing hundreds of Confederate troops. They were hauling heavy black cannons over roadways and winding dirt paths that cut through groves of palmetto trees to sites on the two islands across the harbor on either side of the island on which Sumter sat. Every day there were more troops. The dashing, well-dressed, handsome General Beauregard, with his neatly trimmed moustache and elegant goatee, the scion of a wealthy New Orleans French Creole family, had made a good impression on Charlestonians as soon as he had arrived in the city earlier that week. Beauregard had seen action in the Mexican War, serving as an engineer, and was a former superintendent of West Point. He was a colorful figure and adored by Charlestonians. He is the hero of the hour, gushed one woman.

Beauregard commanded six thousand busy Confederate and South Carolina state soldiers, and more of all shapes and sizes walked into his camp each day from all over the South. Anderson, from his elevated perch over the calm blue waters of the harbor, watched Beauregard’s every movement as he prepared his army for a possible bombardment of Fort Sumter. The Union major and his rival believed they soon might face off in the very first battle of the Civil War.

The road to Fort Sumter began with the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s sixteenth president in November 1860. Southerners were certain that Lincoln, who took office with a Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, would eradicate slavery, and wanted no part of him and his government. South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, and six more states soon followed. South Carolina demanded that the federal government turn over Fort Sumter. Negotiations to do so had failed with President James Buchanan and had started anew with Lincoln, who took office nine weeks after South Carolina seceded. The South threatened to take the fort by force and had begun to surround it with troops from the new Confederate government’s hastily formed army. In Washington, D.C., Lincoln and his Cabinet would soon debate what to do about the fort. Tensions grew.

Unlike the flamboyant Beauregard, Anderson was conservative. He was a by-the-book officer and did little without guidance from Washington. He was highly conflicted, too, because he was from Kentucky, a slave state, and believed in slavery, and was here at Fort Sumter supporting a new anti-slavery president’s army. Torn between North and South, Anderson, father of five (and great-grandfather of actor Montgomery Clift), admitted that my heart was never in this war. He brought his spyglass down to his waist but kept staring. He knew from the number and size of the cannons, including a substantial number of large, powerful Columbiads nestled into thick green groves of palmetto trees, that the fort could be taken in a day or two of heavy bombardment. He scoffed at Northern newspaper reports that said it would take six months to level the fort (the New York Herald even called Sumter the strongest fort of its size in the world). Anderson shivered in the chilly early morning March air.

On the day Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president, Fort Sumter was an unfinished, odd-looking facility occupied by eighty-four officers and enlisted men, nineteen of them musicians, under Major Anderson. Ironically, one of the Unions lieutenants was Jefferson Davis—no relation to the new Confederate president. The men had fled Fort Moultrie, across the harbor from Sumter, undetected, on the night of December 26, 1860, six days after South Carolina seceded. Anderson thought the unfinished Sumter offered better protection for his garrison than Moultrie.

Sumter was a pentagonal facility that sat on a flat artificial island two and a half acres in size. It had been under construction since 1829. It had room for 135 cannons, but so far only forty-eight had been installed, and twenty-five of them were not pointed at the Confederates, but at Fort Moultrie. Anderson went to Sumter because of its guns and because its twelve-foot-thick red brick walls were an impressive sixty feet high. It was well out into the water and could be reached by any Union supply or troop ship arriving from the Atlantic Ocean.

Anderson had taken down his flag from the flagpole at Fort Moultrie and carried it with him to Sumter. Early the following morning, when the men were safely settled, he raised it to the top of a flagpole there. When Charlestonians awoke that morning and saw it, they were stunned.

The men, who were running out of supplies, worked at Sumter as the Confederate Army went about its business on shore. The Confederate general was under orders to prevent any Union reinforcements from arriving by sea and, if necessary, to bombard the fort. Every day his men stockpiled more and more cannonballs; they had hundreds already.

One of the Confederate officers preparing to fire on the fort, if need be, was Colonel Chanson, who helped to build Sumter. He told friends he was now worried that he had done too good a job and that the South would be unable to take the fort. A man who had toured Sumter before Anderson occupied it, Edward Ruffin, told friends that it would be extremely difficult to be taken.

The Union soldiers who were stationed there in the winter of 1860–1861 remembered living conditions in the fort as very unpleasant. In addition to the lack of food, there was no mail, no lights, no real mess hall, the nights were windy, and the temperatures varied. The fort… was a deep, dark, damp gloomy looking place, where sunlight rarely penetrated, said Captain Abner Doubleday, Anderson’s second-in-command.

Inside the walls of Fort Sumter on that brisk March morning, Major Anderson found himself in a precarious situation. He had been forbidden to fire on the Confederate troops for any reason, and also to just give up if Confederate forces fired on him. It is neither expected or desired that you should expose your own life, or that of your men in a hopeless conflict in defense of these forts…. It will be your duty to yield to necessity, wrote former Secretary of War John Floyd. That communiqué was one of the few anyone in Washington sent Anderson, and he had taken it upon himself to move to Sumter—something he did not want to do—in preparation for a possible attack.

Anderson started to mount more cannon, raising them to the tops of the walls with block and tackle and a derrick. The men bricked up open cannon embrasures that would not be used to hold guns, as well as all the windows in the brick walls. The fort had few cartridge bags, so the men’s flannel shirts and socks were used for that purpose. The fort’s main gate was repaired and buttressed with large sheets of black iron. A three-foot-thick wall was built in front of it. Sharpshooters in their blue uniforms were stationed atop the walls. To improve the defenses, Captain Doubleday cleverly strung together huge dry goods boxes at the top of the walls that stretched for a hundred yards.

The large Columbiad cannons presented the greatest problem because of their excessive weight. To lift them up to the third level of the fort, Anderson had their carriages cut away and used for blocks in the rather creaky block and tackle lifting process. Dozens of men hoisted two cannons up to the third level, where they were rolled into firing position to loud cheers from the troops. Each night after dinner, the troops took turns picking up and carrying the huge, heavy cannonballs to the third tier, step by slow step up the stairs, under the moonlight.

A trench was built outside the fort and several cannons were placed there, aimed at the Confederate artillery clusters. Anderson had several mines buried under the wharf—any soldiers who might charge over the roadway to attack would trigger an enormous explosion. More mines were placed under pyramids of stone on the esplanade, a promenade that was built outside Sumter’s walls. Howitzers were then placed on each end of the esplanade so any invaders running on it could be fired upon. Ammunition was moved much closer to the guns for immediate use. Finally, there were the homemade hand grenades. Anderson had his men take all the shells they could find, no matter what their size, stuff them with gunpowder, and attach handles to them. In an attack, the men would then attach ropes to the handles and hurl the grenades at the enemy. He had no mortars so he strung four large Columbiad cannons together as a substitute. He filled one cannon with paving stones and prepared to blow it up, firing the stones all over the grounds to kill any invaders. A traverse was constructed in front of the south gate to block shells, and several rooms were converted into a hospital to care for the wounded in case of an attack.

Anderson used well the eighty-four men he had, and continually sent letters—unanswered—to the War Department suggesting they send him 10,000 to 20,000 troops to battle the enemy and defend Sumter properly.

The major was careful to avoid any dangerous or provocative situations. That had happened in mid-January when a United States Army supply ship, the Star of the West, had sailed into the harbor. There was a mix-up in signals. The Confederates fired on her, and Anderson, ever the cautious commander, did not fire back. The ship was forced to sail out of the harbor and disappeared. He did not want another questionable encounter like that one. As a result, one of the problems Anderson had at the fort was a very limited amount of food that he would have to ration if supplies did not arrive soon.

On shore, General Beauregard was keeping an eye on Major Anderson, his former professor at West Point, for whom he had great respect. Beauregard wrote of the Sumter commander, In my opinion, a most gallant officer, incapable of any act that might tarnish his reputation as a soldier.

The Sumter drama was watched carefully from downtown Charleston, four miles away, by Mary Chestnut, the wife of former United States Senator James Chestnut, who resigned that post when South Carolina seceded. Chestnut had held numerous public offices in the state, and from 1858 until 1860 served as its senator. His father was one of the wealthiest men in America. He owned several plantations and 448 slaves. Chestnut Sr. did not permit James to run any of his businesses and never gave him or loaned him any money. Chestnut Jr. scraped by on a law office salary. His father lived to be ninety, long after the end of the war, and when hostilities ceased in 1865, James and Mary found themselves practically penniless.

She kept a thick, detailed diary filled with scenes that she described with great color and tension. She had mixed emotions whenever she peered out across the harbor to Sumter from her Charleston rooftop. She wrote of South Carolina’s secession, I felt a nervous dread and horror of this break with so great a power as the United States but I was ready and willing.

She was not alone. All Charlestonians talked about in the winter and spring of 1861 was if and when the Yankees would clear out of Sumter and very gracefully go home. The residents of the city wanted the Union soldiers, their horses, their luggage, their bugles, and, most of all, their damned flag, out of their city and out of the South.

They wondered—all of America wondered—if the dispute over Fort Sumter would end up in a battle and whether that fierce, fiery confrontation would set off a Civil War.

ONE

Washington, D.C., The White House

March 5, 1861

Shortly after 9 A.M., the newly sworn in President Abraham Lincoln arrived at his second-floor office in the White House to find Joseph Holt, the holdover Secretary of War from James Buchanan’s administration, waiting. Holt looked nervous. He told Lincoln that Major Robert Anderson, the commandant at Fort Sumter, had just sent a dispatch saying he had only six weeks of food and supplies left and feared the worst from Confederate troops who now surrounded the fort on two nearby peninsulas. Anderson also told Holt he would need an army of 20,000 soldiers to hold the fort.

The first thing the new president did was get in touch with General Winfield Scott, the Commander of the United States Army—a huge, six-foot-five, portly man with stringy, curly white hair, the father of seven children—to see what he thought about this supply dilemma at Fort Sumter. Lincoln knew so little about Sumter that he constantly misspelled and mispronounced it, as he did in this letter to General Scott.

Abraham Lincoln

To what point of time can Major Anderson maintain his position at Fort Sumpter without supplies or reinforcements? Can you, now with all the means in your control, supply or reinforce Fort Sumpter within that time?

If not, what amount of means and of what description in addition to that already within your control, would enable you to supply and re-enforce the fortress within that time?

He did not receive a clear answer from General Scott.

General Winfield Scott, Commander of the United States Army

Major Anderson has hard bread, flour and rice for about… 26 days… and salt meat for about 48… how long he could hold out cannot be answered with absolute accuracy.

Then Scott wrote another note to the president.

General Winfield Scott

I now see no alternative but a surrender… as… we cannot send the third of the men in several months necessary to give them relief. Evacuation seems almost inevitable… the worn out garrison [might] be assaulted & carried in the present week….

As a practical military question, the time for succoring Sumter with any means at hand had passed away nearly a month ago. Since then, a surrender under assault or from starvation has been merely a question of time.

General Scott was seventy-four, sometimes fell asleep at meetings, and was a man whose prodigious dining was a source of great humor in Washington, D.C. Scott was having dinner at Wormsley’s Hotel, a five-story hotel in Washington, as the Fort Sumter crisis started. The proprietor described Scott to a friend.

James Wormsley

The General looks worried in his mind. He doesn’t talk as usual, but he eats, does the General. He eats powerful!

Four days later, on March 9, Lincoln summoned his Cabinet to his office in the White House to address the Fort Sumter crisis. Each of them, in one way or another, had been promised their Cabinet positions in exchange for their support of Lincoln at the 1860 Republican Convention in Chicago. The brand new president wanted their opinions on the Sumter issue before making up his mind on what to do. He went around the table, soliciting the view of each Cabinet member.

This was their second meeting on the Fort Sumter crisis. On March 6, they all met with General Winfield Scott, head of the Army, who had given them very secret and distressing news.

Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy

[Scott] told us he had taken the responsibility to order a small military force to Washington for the protection of the government and the public property and archives and that other troops were on their way from the West.

He [described the] perilous condition of the country, and of the difficulties and embarrassments he had experienced for months past, related the measures and precautions he had taken for the public safety, the advice and admonitions he had given President Buchanan, which, however, had been disregarded, and, finally, the apprehensions, perhaps convictions, that hostilities were imminent, and, he feared, inevitable. His statement was full, clear in its details, and of absorbing interest to those of us who were to meet and provide for the conflict now at hand.

Scott told the Cabinet members about Anderson’s food and supplies shortage.

Gideon Welles

It became a question of what action should be taken and for that purpose, as well as to advise us of the condition of affairs he had convened the gentlemen present. The information was to most of us unexpected and there was on the part of such of us who had no intimation of the condition of things in Sumter, an earnest determination to take immediate and efficient measures to relieve and reinforce the garrison. But General Scott without opposing this resolution, related the difficulties which had already taken place and stated the formidable obstacles which were to be encountered….

Any attempt to reinforce or relieve the garrison by sea, Welles opposed as impracticable. (There was a naval officer, Commander West, willing to try it, though.)

Gideon Welles

Many of the naval officers then in Washington and about the Naval Department, were of questionable fidelity. A number had already resigned and most of those who were tainted [by secession] had left the service.

A land attack with Anderson’s requested 20,000 men was deemed impracticable by Scott, too. Mr. Seward, who made many suggestions or inquiries, had doubts and was evidently wholly opposed to any attempt at relief. The President, until decisive steps were finally taken, was averse to offensive measures and anxious to avoid them.

Lincoln listened long and hard to the opinions of all.

Gideon Welles

[President Lincoln] was satisfied that it was impossible to relieve and reinforce the garrison, the attempt would provoke immediate hostilities.

The President, though much distressed with the conclusions of the military officers, and the decisive concurrence of the Secretary of State in this conclusion, appeared to acquiesce in what seemed to be a military necessity but was not disposed to yield until the last moment, and when there was no hope of accomplishing the work if attempted.

Edward Bates, US Attorney General

I was astonished to be informed that Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, may be evacuated, that General Scott, General Totten and Major Anderson concur in the opinion that as the place has but 28 days provisions, it must be relieved, if at all, in that time, and that it will take a force of 20,000 men at least, and a bloody battle, to relieve it. For several days after this, consultations were held as to the feasibility of relieving Fort Sumter, at which were present, explaining and aiding, General Scott, General Totten, Commodore Stringham and Mr. G. V. Fox, who seems to be au fait in all matters in both nautical and military. The army officers and navy officers differ widely about the degree of danger to rapid moving vessels passing under the fire of land batteries. The army officers think destruction almost inevitable where the navy officers think the danger but slight. The one believes that Sumter cannot be relieved, even provisioned, without an army of 20,000 men and a bloody battle. The other (navy) believes that with light, rapid vessels they can cross the bar at a high tide of a dark night, run the enemy’s forts and reach Sumter with little risk.

Gideon Welles

General Scott related the difficulties which had already taken place and stated the formidable objects which were to be encountered from the numerous and well-manned batteries that were erected in Charleston Harbor.

Some would later disagree with the military advice they received, but at the time, the Cabinet saw it as the only information they had.

Gideon Welles

It was a duty to defer to these military gentlemen whose profession and study made them experts, who had by long and faithful service justly acquired the positions they held, and who possessed the confidence of the country. [Lincoln was satisfied that] it was impossible to relieve and re-enforce the garrison. The attempt would provoke immediate hostilities and, if hostilities could not be avoided, he deemed it important that the Administration should not strike the first blow.

William Seward, Secretary of State

Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, under all the circumstances, is it wise to attempt it? It would be both unwise and inhuman not to attempt it. But the facts of the case are known to be that the attempt must be made with the employment of military and marine which would provoke combat and possibly initiate a civil war.

Seward reminded the Cabinet that history had shown that there is no one best policy that governs all circumstances—and that he had been telling Congress this for more than a decade.

William Seward

I learned early from Jefferson that in political affairs we cannot always do what seems to be absolutely best…. It seems to me that we will have inaugurated a Civil War by our own act, without an adequate object after which reunion will be hopeless.

When confronted by angry Southerners, Lincoln had backed off, telling them what they wanted to hear. Around this time Seward and Lincoln were trying to get the Virginia Secession Convention to abandon their idea of following South Carolina. Seward had a newspaper friend assure the convention chairman, George Summers, that if they stayed in the Union, Lincoln would agree to evacuate Fort Sumter.

Lincoln had a private meeting with several delegates from the Virginia Secession Convention while it was in session in late February. Its spokesperson, William Rives, told him bluntly that if he used force in any capacity at Fort Sumter, Virginia would secede from the Union, too.

Abraham Lincoln, walking directly in front of Rives

Mr. Rives! Mr. Rives! If Virginia will stay in, I will withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter.

After he left, Lincoln met with his secretary, John Hay, and told him what they had discussed.

John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary

He promised to evacuate Sumter if they would break up their convention, without any row or nonsense. They demurred. Subsequently, he renewed the proposition to Summers, but without any result. The President was most anxious to avoid bloodshed.

Abraham Lincoln

A state for a fort is no bad business.

Lincoln had been courting Virginia since before his inauguration, with mixed results. The Force Bill, which would give Lincoln unprecedented powers if there was a Civil War, was stridently opposed by Congressman A. R. Boteler of Virginia.

Representative A. R. Boteler, Virginia

It served to deepen the impression that Mr. Lincoln was a kind hearted man, that he was… by no means disposed to interfere, directly or indirectly, with the institutions of slavery in any of the states, or to yield to the clamorous demand of those bloody-minded extremists, who were then so very keen to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

The president persisted with the Virginia politicians. On April 4, he asked Summers to send a representative of the state legislature to the White House for a peace conference. Summers sent John Baldwin.

John Baldwin

Mr. Lincoln received me very cordially, and said he desired to have some private conversation with me. He started through to a back room, opening into another room, but we found two gentlemen there engaged in writing, he seemed to think that would not do and we passed across the hall into a small room opposite. And through that into a large front room. He had locked the door and… drew up two chairs and asked me to take a seat.

Lincoln reiterated his offer to evacuate Sumter if Virginia remained in the Union.

John Baldwin

That will never do under heaven… Mr. President, I did not come here to argue with you…. I tell you before God and man that if there is a gun fired at Sumter, war is inevitable.

As early as March 21, some Southern leaders were telling friends that there would be a war.

William Browne, future Confederate Secretary of State

I am still confident we shall have a collision.

Judah Benjamin, future Confederate Secretary of the Treasury

We have almost certain intelligence of an intention to reinforce Fort Pickens [in Florida], and that is of course war, and must be treated by us at all hazards.

Seward then sent Lincoln an astounding note.

William Seward, to Abraham Lincoln

What do you think of George Summers for Justice of the Supreme Court?

Abraham Lincoln, to William Seward

No!

From the start, there were squabbles in the Cabinet over Fort Sumter and Seward.

Gideon Welles

Mr. Seward, who from the first had viewed with no favor any attempt to relieve Sumter, soon became a very decisive and emphatic opponent of any proposition that was made; said he had entertained doubts and the opinions and arguments of Major Anderson and his officers, confirmed by the distinguished military officers who were consulted had fully convinced him that it would be abortive and useless.

The President, though much distressed with the conclusions of the military officers, and the decisive concurrence of the Secretary of State in those conclusions, appeared to acquiesce in what seemed to be a military necessity but was not disposed to yield until the last moment.

Edward Bates

[Welles’s] earnestness and indignation aroused and electrified the President that the abandonment of Sumter would be justly considered by the people, by the world, by history, as treason.

It annoyed many members of the Cabinet that the President held Seward, his Secretary of State, in such high regard. Lincoln thought Seward an experienced lawmaker, popular with the people, and so did not want to offend him. An example of this popularity was displayed in the recent presidential campaign. When Seward arrived in Chicago to give a speech for Lincoln, a long parade formed for his carriage that was attended by tens of thousands, and soon the crowd surged across the street, halting Seward’s travel.

Reporter, Chicago Daily Democrat

It was only after a severe struggle that the police were finally able to