Coming Fury, Volume 1 (41 page)

This, then, was the group that would serve as the new President’s confidential advisers. It was a unique assortment. Five of the seven had been rivals of Lincoln for the party nomination; four of the seven had at one time or another been Democrats; not one of the lot came from Illinois or had enjoyed any intimacy with Lincoln before the campaign. Whatever else might be said of them all, it was at least true that they did represent the separate elements in the chaotic new party. If Lincoln could control them, he might have a strong government. Choosing these men, he had shown that he was either a complete political innocent or a man of such strength and subtlety that he felt no fear in surrounding himself with men as strong as himself.
⁸

It would take time to see this. As February came to an end, men were trying to determine who was going to be the power behind the throne, taking it for granted that the new President was so weak that there would be such a power somewhere. Young Adams continued to hope that this power would be Seward, who was working constantly to keep Lincoln from falling under the control of the “iron-back Republican” combination symbolized by Chase. It was Adams’s belief that his own father was at one time slated to go into the cabinet, and that Seward had felt obliged to sacrifice him in favor of Cameron in order to build a proper fence around Chase. Congressman Sherrard Clemens, of Virginia, concluded
that the Republican party was already demoralized and disrupted; its factions could never work together, and Lincoln himself—“a cross between a sandhill crane and an Andalusian jackass”—was by all odds the weakest man who had ever been sent to the White House. Virginia, said Clemens, must presently secede because this President-elect was simply impossible: “He is vain, weak, puerile, hypocritical, without manners, without moral grace, and as he talks to you he
punches
you under your ribs.… He is surrounded by a set of toad eaters and bottle holders.”
⁹

Everyone wanted to know what the new government was going to do, but first it was necessary to know what the new government was going to be. No one knew. The true center of power was not yet visible.

The soldiers had not yet been called into action but they were busy, and the materials to force a decision were piling up—in Fort Sumter, and on the mud flats that surrounded it in Charleston harbor. Major Anderson was doing what he could to perfect his defenses, mounting additional guns on the barbette, making his walls more solid by bricking up embrasures that could not be manned, removing stone flagging from the parade ground so that shells that might be thrown into the fort would bury themselves in the sand before exploding. He was also running short of fuel, and his men were dismantling temporary wooden barracks to get firewood. He believed that he might yet avoid a fight, and to a friend he wrote expressing the belief that “the separation which has been inevitable for months will be consummated without the shedding of one drop of blood.” But the local papers kept printing reports that Federal reinforcements were on the way, and he feared this might lead hotheads to open an attack on him. Certainly the batteries that surrounded him were being strengthened day after day; under the circumstances he could do no more than hold on and, hoping for the best, prepare for the worst.
¹

The worst was taking shape before his eyes. South Carolina
had put powerful weapons in position, its guard boats kept a night-and-day watch on the harbor, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that if Washington tried to reinforce him, it would have to mount a full-dress war expedition. Furthermore, the South Carolina authorities were becoming exceedingly impatient, and their impatience was almost as much a problem in Montgomery as in Washington. They wanted this fort captured, and they wanted it done before Abraham Lincoln should become President. South Carolina had forced the pace ever since the secession convention of December 20, and Governor Pickens could see no reason for a change in tactics.

Everybody but Pickens wanted to mark time. Washington could do nothing until the new administration came in, and whether it could do anything effective thereafter seemed an open question. Montgomery was in no better shape; it had to create a new government, and it did not want the first uncertain steps to be taken in the midst of a shooting war. But Governor Pickens wanted action, and he began demanding it before the Southern Confederacy even had a chief executive. On February 7 he sent a breathless telegram to Porcher Miles, at Montgomery: “There is danger ahead unless you give us immediately a strong organized government & take jurisdiction of all military defence we will soon be forced into a war of sections unless you act quickly it will be too late & reaction will commence which will inaugurate confusion & with it the most fatal consequences.” A day later he sent a “did you get my telegram?” follow-up, asking whether the new government was sending commissioners to Washington to demand surrender of the forts and repeating “Every hour is now deeply important.”
²

Miles tried to restrain him, pointing out that South Carolina could no longer go it alone and offering both a sop and a warning for state pride.

“It seems to me,” wrote Miles, “we ought not to attack Ft. Sumter without authority from the Confederate government. I cannot see that the short delay compromises the honor of the State in the least—if—when the attack is ordered—South Carolina troops alone engage in it. We do not ask our Confederate States to help us take it. But our attack necessarily plunges the new government into war with the United States and that before they (our Confederates)
are prepared. This would be the inevitable consequence for surely the United States government as soon as we open with our batteries upon Sumter will be bound by every consideration to send relief and assistance to Major Anderson and his handful of men, who is holding his post by the express orders of his Government. Might not our attack be considered as ‘making war’ which the Provisional Constitution restrains a State from doing except in case of invasion?”

Miles went on: would not South Carolina’s dignity suffer if she immediately began imploring the Confederacy to come to her aid? The delegates at Montgomery knew all about the situation at Charleston, and it was up to them to suggest what ought to happen next. Furthermore, Governor Pickens ought to realize that the President of the Confederacy would appoint his own general to take charge of the operation, because “a general of our appointment might not be acceptable to the President-elect and thus jealousy and distraction and inefficiency would result.”
³

The new government actually was losing very little time. On February 12 it resolved to take charge of “the questions and difficulties now existing between the several States of this Confederacy and the Government of the United States relating to the occupation of the forts, arsenals, navy yards and other public establishments,” and three days later the Confederate Congress unanimously agreed to take possession of the disputed properties “either by negotiations or force, as early as practicable.” President Davis, who had not yet formally been installed in office, was authorized to “make all necessary military preparations” for such a step. In return, Pickens sent the Confederate Congress a letter, reciting South Carolina’s grievances in connection with the continued occupation of Fort Sumter and pointing out that Washington’s denial of the state’s right to take over the fort was in fact a denial of the state’s independence. Arrangements to reduce the fort, he said, were just about complete, and he assumed that when they were completed, everyone would agree that the blow should be struck. He summed up his argument bluntly:

“Fort Sumter should be reduced before the close of the present administration at Washington. If an attack is delayed until after the inauguration of the incoming President of the United States, the
troops now gathered in the capital may then be employed in attempting that which, previous to that time, they could not be spared to do.… If war can be averted, it will be by making the capture of Fort Sumter a fact accomplished during the continuance of the present Administration, and leaving to the incoming Administration the question of an open declaration of war.… Mr. Buchanan cannot resist because he has not the power. Mr. Lincoln may not attack, because the cause of quarrel will have been, or may be considered by him, as past.” The governor went on to say that if war did at last come he would of course regret it, but it would simply show that “under the evil passions which blind and mislead those who govern the United States, no human power could have arrested the attempted overthrow of these States.”
⁴

Jefferson Davis moved quickly to get the power of decision out of Governor Pickens’s hands and into his own—a feat that took a little doing. On February 23 Davis sent Major W. H. C. Whiting, a West Point graduate and a capable engineer officer, off to Charleston harbor to survey the situation. After Whiting got there, Pickens sent Davis another impatient dispatch: “We would desire to be informed if when thoroughly prepared to take the fort shall we do so, or shall we await your order; and shall we demand surrender, or will that demand be made by you?” Back promptly came a message from the new Confederate War Department: “This Government assumes the control of military operations at Charleston, and will make demand of the fort when fully advised. An officer goes tonight to take charge.” In more soothing vein, the message confessed that South Carolina’s perhaps excessive ardor, “natural and just as it is admitted to be,” would have to yield to “the necessity of the case.” When the blow was struck it would have to be successful, since the price of a failure would be disastrous; meanwhile, the officer who was being sent to Charleston to take charge would, on his arrival, muster into the provisional service of the Confederacy the South Carolina troops that were on duty at Charleston.
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In plain English, Davis was not going to have this job ruined by a set of impatient politicians. He would take over the negotiations regarding the possible surrender of Fort Sumter—official representatives of his government were already on their way to Washington
to press the case with Lincoln, or with Seward, or with anyone they could talk to—and he would get a competent soldier into Charleston to handle the military end of things. If a war was to begin at Fort Sumter, it at least would not begin just because some local bigwig gave way to blind enthusiasm. South Carolina would lead the parade no longer.

The implications of all this were clear enough, and bad enough. One way or another, Fort Sumter was going to be taken—if not today, then a little bit later. Washington could give up the fort or fight; the choice that was going to be presented to the new administration would be, simply, to back down or make war. And the choice would be offered, not by a lone state that was going its own way with blind arrogance, but by the South itself. The time for temporizing was just about over.

Meanwhile, efforts to assuage Governor Pickens continued. Porcher Miles wrote him a long letter, insisting that everyone in Montgomery agreed that the fort ought to be taken at the earliest possible moment and that it was necessary to “restrain the ardor of our troops for
a few days only
.” The sole point that was bothering President Davis, said Miles, was the question: “Are we able with present preparations to take the fort?” On this point, he confessed, “we are all in the dark,” but better light would be available very soon, and whenever it could be said that “our batteries can with reasonable certainty reduce Fort Sumter, we will do everything to hasten the attack.”

Other words of caution came from, of all people, William L. Yancey, who found himself for the first time counseling moderation and delay. Yancey confessed that he had hoped South Carolina could take the fort before the Confederate government was organized, but that time had passed. “I can but give you the settled assurance of my mind,” Yancey wrote to Pickens, “that if the Fort shall be assaulted without the orders of the Executive of the Confederate States, it will produce a confusion, an excitement, an indignation and astonishment here in the Confed. Congress that will tend to break up the new government.”
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With Yancey himself talking so gently, even Governor Pickens might feel a little restraint. A more important factor, however, undoubtedly lay in the choice Davis made when he sent a military
commander to Charleston to take charge of the operations in the name of the Confederate government. He selected a man whose personality and talents would play a large part in the history of the Confederacy—the dapper, self-confident, and gifted Creole, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, recently a captain in the United States Army, now a brigadier general in the provisional army of the Confederate states. Beauregard was just the man to help the Charlestonians digest the idea that a higher authority was taking over.

Beauregard was in his early forties; small, vigorous, graceful, his graying hair maintained in glossy blackness by judicious application of hair dye, a man who wore exquisitely tailored uniforms with an air, pleasant but unsmiling, with faultless manners. He bore a good professional reputation; had been an engineer officer on Scott’s staff in the Mexican War, where he had been twice wounded and had twice won brevets for gallantry, had served for one brief week, in January of 1861, as superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point, resigning that position to follow his state, Louisiana, out of the Union. He had enough social position to impress even the Charlestonians, and he immediately captivated not only Governor Pickens but everyone else in South Carolina. Shortly after his arrival he wrote that he was greatly pleased with the people of Charleston, “who are so much like ours in La. that I see but little difference in them.”

Beauregard reached Charleston on March 3, met with Governor Pickens and a concourse of leading citizens at the governor’s headquarters in the Charleston Hotel, and immediately got down to work. He was taken on long tours of the military installations, during which he learned that all of the “high-spirited gentlemen” who accompanied him had made elaborate plans for the reduction of the fort; he listened attentively, and was able to shelve these plans without giving offense to the planners. It did not take him long to discover that there was a great deal to be done.