Coming Fury, Volume 1 (30 page)

This message did not reach Anderson, and he knew nothing about the relief expedition. His own message, however, gave the administration second thoughts. Scott telegraphed to New York to hold the
Star of the West
in port, but he was too late; the steamer was hull down beyond the Jersey highlands when his message arrived. Then the Navy Department sent new orders to Captain W. S. Walker, commander of the
Brooklyn
, telling him to put to sea and meet the
Star of the West
off the entrance to Charleston harbor. If he arrived in time, he was to have the merchant vessel return to New York; if there was any trouble, he was to give such assistance as he could; and if, on arrival, he found that the reinforcements had already been landed, he was to come back to Hampton Roads.
⁵

Anderson was the only person who did not know what was being tried. The administration had done its best to keep the expedition a secret. The
Star of the West
was a vessel ordinarily on
the New York-to-New Orleans run. She had been quietly chartered (for $1250 a day), and the soldiers and supplies had been put on board as unobtrusively as possible, and when the ship cleared there was nothing to show that she was not leaving on her regular run. But the news leaked out, as it was bound to do. On January 8 Governor Pickens, at Charleston, got a telegram from Senator Wigfall saying that troops were on the way, and on the same day a shore boat brought to Fort Sumter a newspaper giving the same information. Major Anderson and his officers read this with much interest, but were inclined to doubt the truth of it, the War Department’s message not having reached them. They noticed that there seemed to be a flurry of signals between Charleston and the outlying batteries and sensed that something was up, but they had no solid information.
⁶

Meanwhile the
Star of the West
moved on toward Charleston, with nobody on board knowing anything about the interchange of messages, leakage of information, orders to the
Brooklyn
, or anything else that had happened since the ship left New York. Late on the afternoon of January 8 Lieutenant Charles R. Woods, of the 9th U. S. Infantry, commanding the troops on the steamer, mustered his men, issued arms and ammunition, and had everybody stand by. Around midnight the ship drew near the harbor entrance. All the harbor lights had been put out, except for one beacon on Fort Sumter itself, and the steamer drifted on the tide, “groping in the dark,” as Lieutenant Woods wrote, her own running lights extinguished, until daybreak. Then, as soon as there was light enough to see, the
Star of the West
crossed the outer bar and steamed up the main-ship channel.

Ahead there was a guard steamer, which hoisted red and blue lights, sent up rockets, and started back into the harbor. The
Star of the West
kept on, keeping as close as possible to Morris Island in order to stay out of range of the guns on Fort Moultrie. On Morris Island the ship’s lookouts could see a palmetto flag, but they saw no batteries there. The troops were sent below, an American flag was hoisted, and the steamer began to enter the harbor.
⁷

On the parapet of Fort Sumter, Captain Abner Doubleday was on watch. Looking seaward in the half-light of a clear dawn he saw the steamer, studied it with his spy glass, identified it as an unarmed
merchant vessel, and concluded that the newspaper story about the
Star of the West
must be true. And on Morris Island the South Carolina gunners—cadets from the Citadel, the state’s military college—saw what he saw, reached the same conclusion, and went into action. South Carolina had not been bluffing: if the discharge of one gun might start a war, here was the gun, shotted and trained toward the target. An officer gave an order, a gunner jerked a lanyard, and there was a stabbing spurt of flame and a sudden burst of smoke, with a dull report echoing out to sea across the empty mud flats. A solid shot went across the bows of the
Star of the West
, which hoisted a second, larger flag and kept on coming … and Captain Doubleday dashed down the stairway to arouse Major Anderson. The fort’s drummers came tumbling out to beat the long roll—that throbbing, stirring call to general quarters, which would be heard all across America during the next four years.
⁸

Anderson came to the parapet and his gunners ran to their stations. On Morris Island more guns were firing. Their first shots were high. Then some gun crew corrected its elevation, and a shot came ricocheting across the smooth water, low and deadly, coming on business. It smashed into the side of the steamer just below the fore chains, narrowly missing a seaman who was taking soundings with a lead line. For whatever it might mean to the country, a steamer flying the United States flag and carrying United States troops had been hit by hostile fire.

Anderson’s men were at their guns, excited, jubilant with the release from tension, waiting for the word. The
Star of the West
came closer, nearing a narrow part of the channel where she would have to make a left turn and expose her unprotected side to the guns on Fort Moultrie, which could break her to bits. Major Anderson stood on the rampart, glass at his eye, studying—and thinking hard.

He had been told to defend himself if attacked, but he had no instructions governing a case like this. (They had been sent but they had never reached him, and the
Brooklyn
, delayed in her own sailing, had not been able to join the
Star of the West
: the major would have to make up his own mind.) If he opened fire, the United States and South Carolina would be at war.… An officer nudged
him and pointed across the harbor: Fort Moultrie now was opening fire on the
Star of the West
, taking a few ranging shots, and the officer urged that the fire be returned. Major Anderson hesitated, plainly uncertain, an immense weight of responsibility resting on him.

Meanwhile, the skipper of the
Star of the West
had had enough. Fort Sumter was not opening fire, and the cross-fire from Morris Island and Fort Moultrie would unquestionably send the
Star of the West
to the bottom in short order. The steamer reduced speed, swung about in a tight circle, headed back for the open sea, and put on speed. Soldiers in Fort Sumter swore; at an eight-inch sea-coast howitzer, trained on the Morris Island battery, a gunnery sergeant stood with the lanyard in his hand, waiting for orders. And then, at last, Major Anderson made up his mind.

“Hold on—do not fire,” he said. “I will wait. Let the men go to their quarters, leaving two at each gun. I wish to see the officers in their quarters.”

Members of the garrison were disappointed and indignant. Captain Foster, of the engineers, ran down the stairs in open fury, throwing his hat on the ground and muttering something about “trample on the flag.” Among the civilians who were still in Fort Sumter was the wife of one of the soldiers, and she ran to a loaded gun and reached for the lanyard, crying that she would fire the gun herself. Captain Doubleday gently drew her away, remarking that she had a good deal of courage. “Courage!” she snapped. “I should think, sir, a soldier’s wife
ought
to have courage!”

The
Star of the West
went on out to sea, got past the bar, turned north, and started back for New York. The Southern guns ceased firing, and Major Anderson’s officers, stirred and resentful, gathered in the major’s room for a conference. Major Anderson asked for their advice.
⁹

The moment of crisis had passed—and yet this crisis was permanent. Major Anderson had refused to blast a clear path for the
Star of the West
, but he still had his guns, he was the representative of a government whose flag had been fired on, and it seemed to him now that he should close the port, refusing to permit any steamer to enter or leave or even move about from the city to the South Carolina batteries. He raised the point. This, some of his
officers argued, would most certainly be taken as an act of war, as fateful as if he had opened fire during the past hour; on the other hand, it appeared that an act of war had already been committed, every day counted—for the South Carolina authorities would assuredly build more batteries and put more guns in position—and perhaps the challenge should be accepted at once. As a matter of fact, Major Anderson by now had just about ceased to hope that war could be averted. To a friend in Washington he wrote, two days after this, that although his own sympathies were all with the South: “I have lost all sympathy with the people who govern this state. They are resolved to cement their secession with blood.”
¹⁰

In the end, it was agreed that Major Anderson should write to Governor Pickens and ask him if he had authorized his troops to fire on the
Star of the West
. If he replied that the action was official, then Fort Sumter could close the harbor. The officers went about their business and Major Anderson sat down to write.

Dating his note January 9, 1861, he addressed Governor Pickens with stiff formality: “Two of your batteries fired this morning upon an unarmed vessel bearing the flag of my government. As I have not been notified that war has been declared by South Carolina against the government of the United States, I cannot but think that this hostile act was committed without your sanction or authority. Under that hope, and that alone, did I refrain from opening fire upon your batteries.” Accordingly: would the governor disavow the things his troops had done? If not, Major Anderson would regard it as an act of war, and “I shall not … permit any vessels to pass within range of the guns of my fort.”

The governor’s reply came back within hours, and it was equally stiff and formal. South Carolina was an independent nation; the action of the United States in putting troops in Fort Sumter, and then in sending reinforcements, was clearly an act of aggression; and the firing from Morris Island and Fort Moultrie was abundantly justified. If Major Anderson felt that he must use his own guns now, the responsibility was his own: “Your position in this harbor has been tolerated by the authorities of the State, and … it is not perceived how far the conduct which you propose to adopt can find a parallel in the history of any country, or be reconciled with
any other purpose of your Government than that of imposing upon this State the condition of a conquered province.”
¹¹

Governor Pickens had touched the point precisely. There was no parallel in the history of any country for the things that were being done these days, and neither governor, major, nor anyone else had any clear rules for guidance. Young Lieutenant J. Norman Hall, of the Sumter garrison, had taken Major Anderson’s letter ashore under a flag of truce, and he reported that the city of Charleston was in an uproar—the word had gone about that Fort Sumter was about to bombard the town and that the lieutenant had come ashore to give due warning, and an excited crowd was on the streets. When he returned to his boat with Governor Pickens’s letter of reply, Lieutenant Hall was accompanied to the dock by one of the governor’s aides and an armed escort. On the dock he found anxious citizens questioning his boat’s crew and learning nothing.
¹²

The citizens learned nothing because no final decision had been made; there was nothing anyone could tell them. Both Major Anderson and Governor Pickens were holding firm, each man bound on a collision course, but there was still time for second thoughts. On January 11 a steamer came out to the fort bearing representatives from the governor—D. F. Jamison, president of the secession convention, and Judge A. G. McGrath, South Carolina’s Secretary of State. The representatives landed with some difficulty—their steamer ran aground near the fort, and a small boat was sent out to get them—and they went to Major Anderson’s room, giving him a letter in which Governor Pickens, moved by “considerations of the gravest public character,” urged the surrender of Fort Sumter to the South Carolina authorities.

This was not quite the ultimatum it appeared to be. There was discussion, in which Judge McGrath assured the major that “it is not an alternative that is offered to you by the Governor, it is not peace or war that he offers in making this communication to you; it is done more to give you an opportunity, after understanding all of the circumstances, to prevent bloodshed.” Major Anderson replied that he was glad to know this. He would not surrender the fort unless his government told him to do so, but he wanted to prevent bloodshed as much as any man could—and, in the end, he would do this: he would send an officer to Washington
to report and to ask further instructions, and if the governor wanted to send his own man to Washington, to demand the fort’s surrender at the top, the two men might go together. He embodied these thoughts in a letter to Governor Pickens, closing with an expression of his regret that “you have made a demand with which I cannot comply.”

It was so arranged, at last. Once more, the center of gravity shifted from the fort to the White House. Something faintly resembling a truce ensued. Arrangements were devised to send the women and children of the garrison to New York, it was made possible for Major Anderson to get day-to-day supplies of fresh meat and vegetables from the Charleston markets, and both the demand for surrender and the threat to close the port were held in abeyance. Meanwhile, Governor Pickens’s troops continued to build more batteries to bear on the fort and the entrance to the harbor, and the Fort Sumter garrison worked unceasingly to get more guns mounted, to block up embrasures that would not be used, and to get ready for a fight or a siege.
¹³

A breathing spell, in short: brought on, perhaps, by a sudden realization in Charleston that an armed clash right now might be fatal to Southern hopes.

Once again, the secessionists had overplayed their hand. The South Carolina gunners who fired on the
Star of the West
had, in effect, invited the Federal government to start the war then and there if it wanted a war; but in plain fact a war begun just then could have been very one-sided. South Carolina was the only state that had actually seceded. (Mississippi was to vote for secession that very day, and Florida would follow the day after, but at the moment South Carolina stood alone.) There was no Southern Confederacy—no government, no chain of organization, no army except for the South Carolina militia: there was, in short, nothing to fight a war with, and this fact was beginning to dawn on the Southern leaders. Early in the month, Governor Pickens’s chief military adviser had written earnestly “to express my conviction of the inexpediency of commencing actual hostilities, on our side, in our present wholly unprepared state,” and he had said that “nothing but bloody discomfiture must attend the opening campaign.”
¹⁴
After the meeting between Major Anderson and the governor’s people, Jefferson
Davis, in Washington, sent similar words of caution. Senator Davis had led troops in combat and he had been Secretary of War, and he understood that a shooting war was not to be begun lightly. To Governor Pickens he wrote soberly: