Coming Fury, Volume 1 (26 page)

In his appraisal of the situation, Major Anderson had a number of points to consider. The work of repairing Fort Moultrie had gone well. A large force of civilian workers had been employed, the troublesome sand had been shoveled away from the parapets, the guns were properly mounted, and if the fort had a proper garrison it could probably be held against any assault. But that, of course was the trouble: a proper garrison Fort Moultrie did not have and could not get, and under the circumstances the place could not be defended. It was hard enough just to keep out the idlers and the sight-seers. There was a crowd around all day long, from dawn until dusk—newspaper correspondents, militiamen, unending numbers of ordinary citizens, making sketches, taking notes, asking questions, prying into everything, being so busy and so numerous that the major had felt obliged to post guards and close his gates: a step that caused angry mutterings and led people to talk resentfully about hirelings and mercenaries. Members of the garrison were under constant strain; at one stage two of the officers, worn out by the need for everlasting watchfulness, had put their wives on duty on the parapet while they themselves tried to catch up on lost sleep. Worried, Captain Foster notified the War Department that two guard steamers were patrolling the waters around Fort Sumter, and Captain Doubleday believed that South Carolina refrained from seizing Fort Sumter at once only because the authorities felt that the construction job there might as well be completed with Federal money: why take over an unfinished fort when a finished one could be had for a little waiting?
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Since it was impossible to keep any secrets with a crowd of inquisitive strangers watching everything and questioning everybody, Anderson kept his intentions to himself. December 26 began like any other day, except that the post quartermaster was ordered to charter some barges and schooners and have them drawn up by the sea wall as near the fort as might be. If the garrison left Fort Moultrie, the wives and children of the enlisted men would lose their quarters, so the quartermaster was to take them across the harbor to old Fort Johnson, on the south side, a fort which was no longer operational but which did contain some dilapidated living quarters. Meanwhile, rowboats such as were used to transport workmen to and from Fort Sumter were to be beached on another part of the water front; and, for the rest, the ordinary routine prevailed in Fort Moultrie that day, and at dusk Captain Doubleday walked up from his quarters to invite Major Anderson to come down and have a cup of tea.

It was no day for afternoon tea. Doubleday noticed that the other officers were standing about the major, acting as if they had just learned something big, and he understood what was on their minds when the major, ignoring the invitation to tea, told him: “Captain, in twenty minutes you will leave with your company for Fort Sumter.”

Doubleday hurried off to muster his command, and while the men were collecting muskets and knapsacks, he stepped into his own quarters to tell Mrs. Doubleday to pack her belongings as fast as she could and slip out into the sand hills somewhere; he was convinced that the move to Fort Sumter would start a big fight, and he wanted her out of the line of fire. Mrs. Doubleday got her things together, went out the sally port, and took refuge in the house of the post sutler, moving from there to the home of the post chaplain; she would go next day to a hotel in Charleston, and would leave for the North as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the families of the enlisted men went to the boats that were to take them to Fort Johnson, and as the twilight deepened, the officers and men of the Fort Moultrie garrison set off for their own boats.

On this evening the soldiers’ luck was in, and the procession to the beach went unnoticed. The sun had gone down and the winter twilight was thick, the regular crowd of sight-seers had
dispersed, and the militiamen who ordinarily kept watching the fort seemed to have gone home to supper; the streets of the little town of Moultrieville were deserted, and the parade of two diminutive companies of men went unnoticed. The whole garrison was on hand, except for a rear guard left in Fort Moultrie—seven privates, four non-coms, and the post’s doctor, a Pennsylvanian named Samuel W. Crawford. Crawford had been on the army roster for nine years with the rank of assistant surgeon, but tonight he was acting as a line officer and the role seems to have pleased him; once he got north he would transfer from the medical corps to the infantry, and he would end with a major general’s commission. With him, to take more immediate charge of the rear guard’s activities, was Captain Foster, who as an officer of the Corps of Engineers was not properly a member of the garrison.

At the water front, officers and men got into the boats as speedily as they could, and after arranging their baggage they shoved off. Back in Moultrie, Foster and Crawford had a couple of the fort’s biggest guns loaded and trained out over the bay, ready to sink any secessionist guard boat that might try to interfere; and with this support the little flotilla steered for Fort Sumter.

It had not gone far before Doubleday saw one of the guard boats heading for his own craft. He had his men remove their coats and lay them over their muskets, which were on the thwarts beside them, and he himself took off his military cap and threw open his coat so that his brass buttons would not be seen; with luck, the people on the guard boat might fail to recognize these men as soldiers, would perhaps assume that this rowboat simply carried workers over to Fort Sumter.

The guard boat came closer, and at a distance of perhaps 100 yards it drifted to a stop, motionless paddle wheels dripping, officers on the upper deck peering through the dusk at the open boat. Farther away, apparently not seen from the guard boat, the rest of Anderson’s boats kept on their way; Doubleday’s men continued to row with the clumsy care of landsmen; and on the parapet of Fort Moultrie, back in the shore-line dark, Foster and Crawford and the enlisted men swung two ponderous Columbiads around and tried to get the South Carolina guard boat in their sights. At last the people on the guard boat concluded that nothing out of
the ordinary was going on, the paddle wheels began to dip and splash again, and the steamer chuffed off. In fifteen minutes the small boats touched the esplanade in front of Fort Sumter. The soldiers put on their coats and picked up their muskets, formed rank on the open wharf before the main gate, swung into column, and went tramping into Fort Sumter.
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Inside the fort were more than 100 carpenters, bricklayers, stonecutters, and other construction workers, lounging about with the day’s chores at an end. These, without ceremony, were herded out to the esplanade and tumbled into the boats to return to Charleston before they were entirely clear as to whether the fort was being occupied by soldiers of the United States or soldiers of South Carolina. Anderson saw to it that proper guards were posted, set details to work blocking some of the open embrasures on the ground level, perfected his defenses as well as he could with the means at hand. Then he had two guns fired, to notify the remnant at Fort Moultrie that the transfer had been completed. By the oddest chance, old Mr. Ruffin was near when these guns were fired. He had embarked on a steamer that afternoon to go down to Fernandina, and he was a few miles from Fort Moultrie, standing on the upper deck, when the sound of the guns went echoing across the darkened harbor. It puzzled him, and in his diary he wrote that “it was an unusual occurrence … I supposed this firing at so unusual an hour must have been a signal for something.”
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A signal it was, to reverberate far beyond Charleston; bearing news, first of all, to the state authorities that they had been tricked. The guard ships set their sirens wailing and burned blue lights, and from lookout stations along the water front, rockets soared into the night. At daybreak the South Carolina troops moved into Fort Moultrie—which Foster, Crawford, and their squad had of course evacuated—and a little later in the morning Castle Pinckney also was seized. The Federal arsenal in Charleston was taken over on December 30. Major Anderson, meanwhile, having satisfied himself that everything that ought to be done tonight had been done, hurried to write a note to his wife.

“Thanks be to God,” he wrote. “I give them with my whole heart for His having given me the will and shewn the way to bring my command to this Fort. I can now breathe freely. The whole
force of S. Carolina would not venture to attack us.… I have not time to write more—as I must make my report to the Ad Gen.… Praise be to God for His merciful kindness to us. I think that the whole country north and South should thank Him for this step.”
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In more formal vein he then wrote to Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, informing him that “I have just completed, by the blessing of God, the removal to this fort of all my garrison, except the surgeon, four non-commissioned officers and seven men.” He had left orders, he said, to have the guns at Fort Moultrie spiked and the gun carriages destroyed, and he had told Captain Foster to destroy all of the ammunition which could not be moved to Fort Sumter. He added that “the step which I have taken was, in my opinion, necessary to prevent the effusion of blood.”
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In his belief that both North and South would offer thanks for the move to Fort Sumter, Major Anderson had been overoptimistic. The news hit official Washington like an earthquake, the force of it great enough finally to compel President Buchanan to face up to unpleasant reality.

South Carolina’s commissioners, chosen to negotiate for the cession of Federal property, had just reached the capital. They were men of high standing—Robert W. Barnwell, J. H. Adams, and James L. Orr—and Buchanan, who could find nothing in the book telling what a President should do when a state has declared itself independent, had consented to receive them on December 27. On the morning of that day, in preparation for this meeting, the commissioners were in deep conference with Trescot, who had at last resigned as Assistant Secretary of State and who was remaining in Washington as South Carolina’s agent. The conference had hardly begun when the news from Charleston arrived, brought by the indignant Senator Louis Trezevant Wigfall, of Texas, burly duelist, master of Senate debate, a forceful battler for states’ rights. The men expressed shocked disbelief. Trescot, who had seen much of Secretary Floyd of late, was sure that if Anderson had done this thing, he had done it without authority. At this moment Floyd himself entered, and when Trescot turned to him and remarked, “I will pledge my life, if it has been done, it has been done without orders,” Floyd smiled confidently.

“You can do more,” he told Trescot. “You can pledge your life, Mr. Trescot, that it is not so. It is impossible. It would be not only without orders, but in the face of orders.”

Despite Floyd’s assurances, the conference broke up and Trescot hurried to the Capitol building, where he broke the news to Jefferson Davis and Senator R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia—two of the most respected of Southern leaders, men who stood firmly for Southern rights but who had never been numbered with the fire-eaters. The three men went to the White House, and presently were in conference with Buchanan himself.

As Trescot remembered it, Davis opened the conversation by asking Buchanan bluntly: “Have you received any intelligence from Charleston in the last few hours?” When Buchanan said that he had not, Davis said: “Then I have a great calamity to announce to you.” He told the President what had happened—how Anderson and his garrison had moved to Fort Sumter, spiking guns and burning gun carriages behind them, even chopping down the Fort Moultrie flag staff as a departing gesture—and he added: “And now, Mr. President, you are surrounded with blood and dishonor on all sides.”

Buchanan stood by the mantelpiece, crushing a cigar in one hand; then he sank into a chair, bursting out at last: “My God, are calamities never to come singly? I call God to witness, you gentlemen better than anybody know that this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy.” This was all very well, but it was not enough. The visitors told Buchanan that he must do something, and do it quickly; South Carolina would unquestionably seize Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney, and would probably attack Fort Sumter as well, and only a prompt statement from the President that the status quo would be restored at once would insure peace. Buchanan, as Trescot saw it, seemed inclined to agree; then he demurred, said that he must consult with his cabinet, insisted that he could not condemn Major Anderson unheard. The visitors argued, but without avail, and at last they went out, Buchanan saying that his meeting with the South Carolina commissioners must be postponed. Then Buchanan went to talk with the cabinet.
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The cabinet had changed since the argument about the Charleston forts began. It was no longer split down the middle, unable to give solid advice to a President who relied more than most executives
on the advice of his cabinet; it was taking a new form, moving rapidly toward a strong Unionist position. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, stout and shaggy and rumpled, one of the ablest and most forceful of all the Southern leaders, had resigned as Secretary of the Treasury on December 8, writing Buchanan manfully that “a sense of duty to the state of Georgia”—which was well on the road toward an act of secession—made it improper for him to remain any longer. “The evil,” Cobb wrote sadly, “has now passed beyond control.” He believed that Buchanan’s administration would certainly be the last one under the old Union, and he added gracefully that history would unquestionably rank it “with the purest and ablest of those that preceded it.” Cobb’s resignation had been followed, within a week, by that of Lewis Cass, of Michigan, who quit as Secretary of State because he felt the administration ought to have sent reinforcements to Charleston. Cass was aging and querulous and he had been rather ineffective, but with the departure of Cobb the cabinet had lost one of its ruling spirits.
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