A crisis was evidently approaching, and public feeling all over the Country was wrought up to the highest degree of tension and stood tip-toe with intense expectancy. The test of the doctrine of Secession was about to be made there, in the harbor of Charleston, upon which the eyes of Patriot and Rebel were alike feverishly bent.
There, in Charleston harbor, grimly erect, stood the octagon-shaped Fort Sumter, mid-way of the harbor entrance, the Stars and Stripes proudly waving from its lofty central flagstaff, its guns bristling on every side through the casemates and embrasures, as if with a knowledge of their defensive power.
About equidistant from Fort Sumter on either side of the harbor-entrance, were the Rebel works at Fort Moultrie and Battery Bee on Sullivan's Island, on the one side, and Cummings Point Battery, on Morris Island, on the other-besides a number of other batteries facing seaward along the sea-coast line of Morris Island. Further in, on the same side of the harbor, and but little further off from Fort Sumter, stood Fort Johnson on James Island, while Castle Pinckney and a Floating Battery were between the beleagured Fort and the city of Charleston.
Thus, the Federal Fort was threatened with the concentrated fire of these well-manned Rebel fortifications on all sides, and in its then condition was plainly doomed; for, while the swarming Rebels, unmolested by Fort Sumter, had been permitted to surround that Fort with frowning batteries, whose guns outnumbered those of the Fort, as ten to one, and whose caliber was also superior, its own condition was anything but that of readiness for the inevitable coming encounter.
That the officers' quarters, barracks, and other frame-work wooden buildings should have been permitted to remain as a standing invitation to conflagration from bombardment, can only be accounted for on the supposition that the gallant officer in command, himself a Southerner, would not believe it possible that the thousands of armed Americans by whom he was threatened and encircled, could fire upon the flag of their own native Country. He and his garrison of seventy men, were soon to learn the bitter truth, amid a tempest of bursting shot and shell, the furnace-heat of crackling walls, and suffocating volumes of dense smoke produced by an uncontrollable conflagration.
The Rebel leaders at Washington had prevented an attack in January upon the forts in the harbor of Charleston, and at Pensacola.—[McPherson's History of the Rebellion, p. 112.]—In consequence of which failure to proceed to the last extremity at once, the energies of the Rebellion had perceptibly diminished.
Said the Mobile Mercury: "The country is sinking into a fatal apathy, and the spirit and even the patriotism of the people is oozing out, under this do-nothing policy. If something is not done pretty soon, decisive, either evacuation or expulsion, the whole country will become so disgusted with the sham of Southern independence that the first chance the people get at a popular election they will turn the whole movement topsy-turvy so bad that it never on Earth can be righted again."
After the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, however, the Rebel authorities at Montgomery lost no time, but strained every nerve to precipitate War. They felt that there was danger to the cause of Secession in delay; that there were wavering States outside the Confederacy, like Virginia, that might be dragged into the Confederacy by prompt and bloody work; and wavering States within, like Alabama, that must be kept in by similar means. Their emissaries were busy everywhere in the South, early in April, preaching an instant crusade against the old flag—inciting the people to demand instant hostilities against Fort Sumter—and to cross a Rubicon of blood, over which there could be no return.
Many of the Rebel leaders seemed to be haunted by the fear (no doubt well founded) that unless blood was shed—unless an impassable barrier, crimsoned with human gore, was raised between the new Confederacy and the old Union—there would surely be an ever-present danger of that Confederacy falling to pieces. Hence they were now active in working the people up to the required point of frenzy.
As a specimen of their speeches, may be quoted that of Roger A. Pryor, of Virginia, who, at Charleston, April 10, 1861, replying to a serenade, said:—[Charleston Mercury's report.]