Coming Fury, Volume 1 (53 page)

“Major Anderson, I come from General Beauregard. It is time to put a stop to this, sir. The flames are raging all around you and you have defended your flag gallantly. Will you evacuate, sir?”

The major was ready to call it quits. Washington had specifically told him that a last-ditch sacrifice was not expected of him. He had defended his flag long enough to meet all requirements; his magazine might explode before long, his cartridges were nearly all gone, and with flames and glowing embers all over the place, it was impossible to make new ones, and, besides, the main gate had been blown in and a storming party could overrun the fort any time it cared to make the effort. Anderson said he would surrender on the terms originally proposed—that he be allowed to salute his flag and then, with all the honors of war, take his men and their personal property back to New York. Wigfall said that this was a deal: “Lower your flag, and the firing will cease. I will see General Beauregard and you military men will arrange all the terms.” Anderson reflected that his men were at the point of exhaustion, and it seemed to him that Wigfall’s coming was providential. Down came the United States flag, and up went the white flag of surrender.

At this point Captain Lee and his two civilian companions got to the fort. Presented to Major Anderson, Lee said that Beauregard had sent them to offer assistance, if assistance happened to be needed, and to find out what all of this raising and lowering of flags meant. Anderson, puzzled, explained that he had just surrendered to Colonel Wigfall, whereupon his three visitors exchanged baffled looks; then they explained that although Wigfall did belong to Beauregard’s staff, he had not seen the general for two days and had come out to the fort strictly on his own hook. Anderson muttered: “Gentlemen, this is a very awkward business,” which stated the case accurately; he had just surrendered to a man who had no authority either to demand or to receive a surrender. Anderson ordered the white flag hauled down and the national flag raised; the fighting would be resumed.
¹³

In the end, though, things were arranged. Captain Lee suggested that everything be left as it was while they got in touch with Beauregard; Anderson wrote out his understanding of the terms on which he and Wigfall had agreed; the Confederates took this letter
to the general and made explanation, and in two or three hours—white flag still flying, and all the guns silent—they came back and it was settled. The surrender was official, as of that moment, but on the next day Anderson could hoist his flag, salute it, haul it down again, and march forth to board one of Captain Fox’s steamers. The fighting was over … there had been too much of it for this one seaport town to contain, and it had brimmed over the rim; it would run all across the South, and into the North as well, going on and on until nobody could see any end to it.

The liner
Baltic
drew too much water to come in over the bar, and so the steamer
Ysabel
was sent in to take off the garrison. Shortly after the noon hour on Sunday, April 14, the final ceremony was held, the men of the garrison looking glum, Major Anderson near to tears with emotion, Charleston harbor all crammed with boats full of people, local wherrymen doing a land-office business rowing sight-seers past the fort at fifty cents a head. There would be this final salute … but things that were planned in connection with Fort Sumter always went awry.

The salute was being fired by one of the big guns on the barbette. Some burning fragment of a powder bag was caught by the wind and dropped on a pile of ready cartridges behind the piece, and there was a sudden explosion—and the only loss of life caused by the great battle of Fort Sumter took place here and now, twenty-four hours after the fighting had stopped. (One of the fantastic things about Fort Sumter was that about 4000 shells were fired altogether, without killing anyone on either side.) Private Daniel Hough, a regular artillerist, was instantly killed, and five other soldiers were wounded, one so gravely that he died a few days later in a Charleston hospital. Private Hough was buried in the fort, with a company of South Carolina volunteers presenting arms and a Confederate naval chaplain conducting services. Then the band struck up “Yankee Doodle,” the United States troops marched out to the waiting transport, the Confederate and Palmetto flags soared to the top of the flag pole, and guns all around the harbor fired a jubilant salute. Beauregard came out to make formal inspection of the fort, along with Governor Pickens and other notables. Captain Lee, examining the place with the professional eye of a military
engineer, found it badly damaged and estimated that it would cost at least $350,000 to make suitable repairs.
¹⁴

Out at sea, the transports and the warships steamed north for Sandy Hook.

Dining with three cabinet members not long after the fall of Fort Sumter, Winfield Scott expressed complete confidence in Northern victory, but doubted that there would be an early end to the nation’s troubles. For a long time to come, he said, it would require the exercise of all of the powers of government “to restrain the fury of the noncombatants.”
¹

This fury was an elemental force that swept through North and South in precisely the same way, and it was going across the land like a flame. It did not look like fury at first; it was wild, laughing, extravagant, armed with flags and music and the power of speech, groping insistently for heavier weapons. The coming of war had released it. Something unendurable had ended; the uncertainty and the doubt were gone, along with the need to examine mind and heart for unattainable answers, and a Boston merchant looked about him at the crowds, the waving banners, and the general jubilation and wrote: “The heather is on fire. I never before knew what a popular excitement can be.” The London
Times
’s Mr. Russell, stopping in North Carolina on his way to Charleston, saw the same thing—“flushed faces, wild eyes, screaming mouths,” with men shouting so stridently for Jefferson Davis and the Southern Confederacy (to which North Carolina had not yet attached itself) that the bands playing “Dixie” could not be heard. Men slapped strangers on the backs, women tossed bunches of flowers from windows, and in Richmond a crowd paraded to the Tredegar Iron Works under a Confederate flag, dragged a cannon to the steps of the state Capitol, and fired a salute. Some fundamental emotion had slipped the leash; it would control both President Lincoln and President Davis, and yet at the same time it was a force which the two men themselves would have to control in order to make war.
²

Dazzled by the overwhelming public response to the news that one flag had gone down and another had gone up, ordinarily sensible men gave way to uncritical vaporing. Youthful John Hay, the somewhat condescending ornament of the White House secretariat, looked at a company of untried Northern militia and wrote: “When men like these leave their horses, their women and their wine, harden their hands, eat crackers for dinner, wear a shirt for a week and never black their shoes—all for a principle—it is hard to set any bounds to the possibilities of such an army.” Hard indeed; particularly so since exactly the same sort of men were doing exactly the same things in the South for a diametrically opposed principle, creating boundless possibilities of their own. Leroy Pope Walker, the Confederate Secretary of War, told a serenading crowd in Montgomery that the Confederate flag “will, before the first of May, float over the dome of the old capitol in Washington,” and he went on to say that if Southern chivalry were pushed too far, the flag might eventually rise over Faneuil Hall in Boston. The eminent German-American Carl Schurz wrote admiringly that “millionaires’ sons rushed to the colors by the side of laborers,” and correspondent Russell noted that barefooted poor whites in the deepest South were whooping it up for Confederate independence as loyally as the wealthiest planters.
³

Through the fall and winter, events had seemed to move slowly, as if fate wanted to give men a chance to have second thoughts about what was being done. Now everything began to go with a rush, and what was done would be done for keeps. White House routine had gone about as usual on April 13, when Anderson was driven to surrender. Lincoln received visitors, signed papers, worried about patronage. The cabinet met briefly, but in the absence of conclusive news it could do very little. During the morning Lincoln met with a delegation from the Virginia secession convention. What this convention would inevitably do was strongly indicated by the news in the morning papers; Roger Pryor had cried “Strike a blow!” and the blow had been struck, once and for all. Still, there was time for a word from the President, and Lincoln had written out a brief statement: a cautious indication of future policy, saying much less than was on the President’s mind.

If it proved true, he said, that Fort Sumter had actually been
attacked, he would perhaps suspend the delivery of United States mails in the states that claimed to have seceded, for he believed that the commencement of actual war against the government justified and perhaps required such a step. He still considered all military posts and property in the secessionist states to be Federal property, and he continued to stand by the policy laid down in the inaugural—to hold, occupy and possess such places. He would not try to collect duties and imposts by armed invasion of any part of the country, but at the same time he might conceivably land an armed force, in case of need, to relieve a fort along the borders.… The delegates went away as wise as when they came but probably no wiser.
⁴

Lincoln would do a great deal more than he had told the Virginians that Saturday, because he clearly had concluded that the time for temporizing had gone. Whatever might or might not have been done, once the firing began at Fort Sumter, Lincoln was ready to make war. If the border states could stand the shock and would go along, well and good; if not, they could go where they chose. He would fight the theory and the fact of secession with all the power at his disposal, letting what had happened at Charleston stand as a declaration of war. On Sunday, April 14, when news that Anderson had hauled down his flag reached Washington, Lincoln met with his cabinet again, and talked to his military advisers, and on Monday morning he issued a proclamation—an announcement that the war was on, and a statement (as far as one could be made at this moment) of the policy that would guide him in the conduct of that war. It went to the country on April 15. After reciting the obvious fact that “combinations too powerful to be suppressed” by ordinary law courts and marshals had taken charge of affairs in the seven secessionist states, it announced that the several states of the Union were called on to contribute 75,000 militia “in order to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed.” It continued:

“I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long endured.

“I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts,
places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.

“And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse, and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.

“Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress. Senators and Representatives are therefore summoned to assemble at their respective chambers, at 12 o’clock noon, on Thursday, the fourth day of July, next, then and there to consider and determine such measures, as, in their wisdom, the public safety, and interest may seem to demand.”
⁵

This was clear enough, and it went substantially beyond the threat to suspend the mail service and reinforce beleaguered garrisons which he had mentioned to the Virginia delegation two days earlier. It was a flat announcement that the unbroken Union would be fought for, a promise that slavery would not be disturbed—the word “property” had a very specific meaning in those days—and a clear indication that this President would aggressively use all of his powers right up to the hilt. It was mid-April now, and Congress would not meet until early in July. Until then, Abraham Lincoln would be the government, free to act as he chose with no restraint except the knowledge that he would have to give Congress an accounting ten or eleven weeks later—by which time everything Congress did would be done under the incalculable pressure of wartime emergency.

As an experienced politician, Lincoln had looked to his fences before he acted. The Republicans were bound to support him; he was also assured that his decision to go to war would be publicly endorsed by Stephen A. Douglas, which meant that the Democratic party in the Northern states would support the war.