Yet a better analysis of the situation might have taught him that the contest had already commenced and could no longer be avoided. He showed tremendous restraint. A Northerner with Southern sympathies, Buchanan had spent his long career accommodating the South, even to the point of allowing South Carolina to seize all the other federal properties in the state.
For months, as the crisis deepened, Buchanan had vacillated. Finally, in January, he dispatched a paddle wheel steamer, Star of the West , carrying a cargo of provisions and reinforcements for the Sumter garrison.
Some were convinced the Union was finished. The British vice-consul in Charleston, H. He predicted the North would splinter into two or three more republics, putting an end to the United States forever. Although Davis had long argued for the right of secession, when it finally came he was one of few Confederate leaders who recognized that it would probably mean a long and bloody war.
Southern senators and congressmen resigned and headed south. Secessionists occupied federal forts, arsenals and customhouses from Charleston to Galveston, while in Texas, David Twiggs, commander of federal forces there, surrendered his troops to the state militia and joined the Confederate Army. But Lincoln would not take office until March 4. Not until was Inauguration Day moved up to January The new president who slipped quietly into Washington on February 23, forced to keep a low profile because of credible death threats, was convinced that war could still be avoided.
He was willing to live with slavery where it already was. Once in office, Lincoln entered into a high-stakes strategic gamble that was all but invisible to the isolated garrison at Fort Sumter. Lincoln and his advisers believed, however, that secessionist sentiment, red-hot in the Deep South, was only lukewarm in the Upper South states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, and weaker yet in the four slaveholding border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.
Conservatives, including Secretary of State William H. Seward, urged the president to appease the Deep South and evacuate the fort, in hopes of keeping the remaining slave states in the Union. But Lincoln knew that if he did so, he would lose the confidence of both the Republican Party and most of the North. At the same time, he reasoned that the longer the standoff over Fort Sumter continued, the weaker the secessionists—and the stronger the federal government—would look.
Rumors flew in every direction: a federal army was set to invade Texas Northern businessmen would come out en masse against war. In Charleston, the mood fluctuated between overwrought excitement and dread. For a month after his inauguration, Lincoln weighed the political cost of relieving Fort Sumter. On April 4, he came to a decision. He ordered a small flotilla of vessels, led by Navy Capt. Gustavus Vasa Fox, to sail from New York, carrying supplies and reinforcements to the fort.
He refrained from sending a full-scale fleet of warships. The South Carolinians had made clear that any attempt to reinforce Sumter would mean war. In the early hours of April 12, approximately nine hours after the Confederates had first asked Anderson to evacuate Fort Sumter, the envoys were again rowed out to the garrison.
They made an offer: if Anderson would state when he and his men intended to quit the fort, the Confederates would hold their fire. Anderson called a council of his officers: How long could they hold out?
Five days at most, he was told, which meant three days with virtually no food. Although the men had managed to mount about 45 cannon, in addition to the original 15, not all of those could be trained on Confederate positions. Even so, every man at the table voted to reject immediate surrender to the Confederates. But the Confederacy would tolerate no further delay. Anderson roused his men, informing them an attack was imminent.
At a. A single shell from Fort Johnson on James Island rose high into the still-starry sky, curved downward and burst directly over Fort Sumter. As geysers of brick and mortar spumed up where balls hit the ramparts, shouts of triumph rang from the rebel emplacements. To conserve powder cartridges, the garrison endured the bombardment without reply for two and a half hours.
The Union volley sent vast flocks of water birds rocketing skyward from the surrounding marsh. At about 10 a. At Fort Moultrie, now occupied by the Confederates, federal shots hit bales of cotton that rebel gunners were using as bulwarks.
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Show Media. Venable, Charles S. Captain Abner Doubleday aimed the first gun, choosing one of the pounders in the right gorge angle. He trained it against the armored battery on Cummings Point, and the solid shot flew accurately enough, but it bounced harmlessly off the ironwork. The garrison ceased fire once the light was gone, and the surrounding batteries slackened their fire as well, reverting mainly to occasional mortar rounds.
Captain John G. Crawford ventured out on the esplanade to inspect the damage, and their opinions varied according to their perspectives. Foster, the engineer, found "that the exterior of the work was not damaged to any considerable extent," while Crawford, the surgeon, saw holes more than a foot deep in the brick walls, especially on the side facing Cummings Point, and judged the effect of the enemy's shells "great.
On the second day of the bombardment, Confederate hot shot, fired from Fort Moultrie, set Fort Sumter aflame. The burning barracks so threatened the magazine that Captain Foster asked permission to pull out what powder they needed. There were about three hundred barrels of powder inside, and with the help of off-duty officers he rolled about fifty of them into different casemates.
Then the flames came so close that they closed the door and buried it with dirt. By late morning the men inside Fort Sumter all lay face-down in the casemates with wet handkerchiefs pressed to their faces. Confederates on Morris Island were so impressed with the defenders' tenacity that they cheered every shot from Sumter. The rising column of smoke inspired the Confederates to greater efforts, and the shells rained in even faster. At about P. Lieutenant Hall removed it from the pole fragment while Lieutenant Snyder, Peter Hart, and one of the laborers erected a temporary flagstaff on the parapet in the middle of the right face, looking toward the open sea.
The falling of the flag inspired a Confederate officer on Morris Island to make a diplomatic effort. Louis T. Wigfall , a former US senator from Texas, had returned to his native South Carolina to help the secessionist cause. Though he carried a commission as colonel on Beauregard's staff, he was acting strictly on his own when he hopped into a rowboat on Cummings Point, ordered in a private soldier and two enslaved people, and instructed them to row for the fort.
Wigfall represented himself to Anderson as an envoy from General Beauregard, who wanted the bombardment stopped. Anderson replied that he had told Beauregard what terms he would require but added that he would leave the fort immediately rather than waiting until April Wigfall, satisfied, returned to Cummings Point with the news.
The harbor fell silent at about that afternoon. A few minutes later another boat docked at the wharf, carrying the same Captain Lee who had brought the original evacuation demand and two new emissaries.
They presented themselves to Anderson as General Beauregard's messengers, having come because the garrison flag was down and a white flag had been shown at one of the embrasures. Anderson explained Wigfall's visit and mission, but they told him that Wigfall had not been anywhere near General Beauregard for some time. They were the only authorized representatives, they insisted.
Angry, exhausted, and confused, Anderson said he would have to resume firing. The three dissuaded him, asking for a written version of the same terms he had dictated to Wigfall.
The major agreed not to open fire again until Beauregard had had a chance to accept or refuse the conditions.
Word came back at last that the conditions were acceptable to Beauregard.
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