Robert Toombs / Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage

by Pleasant A. Stovall

Seward's mind was of finer and more reflective cast than Mr. Lincoln's. He had all the points of a diplomatist, ingenuity, subtlety, adroitness. He was temporizing over the natural antipathy of the North to war and the probable transient nature of the secession feeling in the South. At that very moment he was assuring England and France that "the conservative element in the South, which was kept under the surface by the violent pressure of secession, will emerge with irresistible force." He believed "that the evils and hardships produced by secession would become intolerably grievous to the Southern States."

Mr. Lincoln was not temporizing at all. He was looking the crisis in the face. What he wanted was support at the North, not at the South. He was willing to force the fighting at Sumter, knowing that the mere act of the Confederates in firing upon the flag would bring to his aid a united North.

Secretary Toombs was one man in the Montgomery Cabinet who was not deceived by Seward's sophistries. He knew the temper of Mr. Lincoln better than Mr. Seward did. He appreciated the feeling at the North, and gave his counsel in the Davis Cabinet against the immediate assault upon Sumter. There was a secret session of the Cabinet in Montgomery. Toombs was pacing the floor during the discussion over Sumter, his hands behind him, and his face wearing that heavy, dreamy look when in repose. Facing about, he turned upon the President and opposed the attack. "Mr. President," he said, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." He clung to the idea expressed in his dispatches to the commissioners, that "So long as the United States neither declares war nor establishes peace, the Confederate States have the advantage of both conditions." But just as President Lincoln overruled Secretary Seward, so President Davis overruled Secretary Toombs.

No event in American history was more portentous than the first gun fired from Fort Johnson at 1.30 o'clock in the morning of April 12, 1861. As the shell wound its graceful curve into the air and fell into the water at the base of Sumter, the Civil War was an accomplished fact. Major Anderson replied with his barbette guns from the fort. He had but little more than 100 men, and early in the engagement was forced to rely entirely upon his casemate ordinance. The Confederate forces numbered about five thousand, with thirty guns and seventeen mortars, and served their guns from the batteries on Mount Pleasant, Cummings Point, and the floating battery. Fort Sumter was built on an artificial island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, and was about three and a half miles from the city. It had cost the government one million dollars, and had not been entirely completed at the time of the bombardment.

The excitement in Charleston at the opening gun was very great. People rushed from their beds to the water-front, and men and women watched the great duel through their glasses. The South had gone into the war with all the fervor of conviction. The gunners in Moultrie and on Morris Island would leap to the ramparts and watch the effect of their shots, and jump back to their guns with a cheer. There was all the pomp and sound, but few of the terrors of war. On the morning of the second day the quarters in the fort caught fire and the whole place was wrapped in flames and smoke, but Major Anderson's men won the admiration of their enemies by standing by their guns and returning the fire at regular intervals. The battle lasted thirty-two hours; more than fifty tons of cannon-balls and eight tons of powder were expended from weapons the most destructive then known to warfare; not a life was lost on either side. Sumter and Moultrie were both badly damaged. Major Anderson surrendered on Saturday, April 13.

The London Times treated this remarkable event in humorous style. The proceedings at Charleston were likened to a cricket match or a regatta in England. The ladies turned out to view the contest. A good shot from Fort Sumter was as much applauded as a good shot from Fort Moultrie. When the American flag was shot away, General Beauregard sent Major Anderson another to fight under. When the fort was found to be on fire, the polite enemy, who had with such intense energy labored to excite the conflagration, offered equally energetic assistance to put it out. The only indignation felt throughout the affair was at the conduct of the Northern flotilla, which kept outside and took no part in the fray. The Southerners resented this as an act of treachery toward their favorite enemy, Major Anderson. "Altogether," says the Times, "nothing can be more free from the furious hatreds, which are distinctive of civil warfare, than this bloodless conflict has been." Another London paper remarked "No one was hurt. And so ended the first, and, we trust, the last engagement of the American Civil War."

Mr. Toombs' prediction, that the attack upon Fort Sumter would "open a hornet's nest" in the North, was sustained. The effect of the assault at that time and the lowering of the national flag to the forces of the Confederacy acted, as Mr. Blaine has stated, "as an inspiration, consolidating public sentiment, dissipating all differences." In fact it brought matters to a crisis all around, and prepared the two sections for the great drama of the War.

An important part of the work of Secretary Toombs was the selection of a commission to proceed to Europe and present the Confederate position to England and France, in order to secure recognition of the new nation. Mr. William L. Yancey was placed at the head of this commission, and with him were associated Mr. A. D. Mason of Virginia, and Mr. A. P. Rost of Louisiana. The first month of the term of the Confederate Secretary of State was occupied in the issue of letters of marque. On the 19th of April President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Southern ports, and declared that privateers with letters of marque from the Southern Confederacy should be treated as pirates. This gave Secretary Toombs a strong point in dealing with foreign powers. The new government had been organized with promptness and ability. Great energy was shown in getting the civil and military branches equipped. The Southern position had been presented with great strength abroad, and France and England were not slow in framing proclamations recognizing the Confederate States as belligerents. Next to immediate recognition as a separate nationality, this step was significant, and was the first triumph of the diplomacy of Secretary Toombs over Secretary Seward. Then came the demand from the foreign powers that the blockade must be effectual, imposing a heavy burden upon the Northern States. Lord Lyons, acting in Washington in concert with the French Government, declared that "Her Majesty's Government would consider a decree closing the ports of the South, actually in possession of the Confederate States, as null and void, and they would not submit to measures on the high seas pursuant to such a decree." Mr Seward bitterly complained that Great Britain "did not sympathize with this government." The British Minister accordingly charged the British Consul at Charleston with the task of obtaining from the Confederate Government securities concerning the proper treatment of neutrals. He asked the accession of the Lincoln government and of the Davis government to the Declaration of Paris of 1856, which had adopted as articles of maritime law that privateering be abolished; that the neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war; that neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag; that a blockade, in order to be binding, must be effectual, that is, must be maintained by a force sufficient to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. These conditions, except the first, were accepted by the Confederate Government.

The Southern Confederacy thus became parties, as Mr. Blaine says, to "an international compact"; and when, a few months later, Mr. Seward offered to waive the point made by Secretary Marcy many years before, and accept the four articles of the Paris convention, he found himself blocked, because the Confederate States had not accepted the first article, abolishing privateering, and her privateers must, therefore, be recognized. It was by these privateers that great damage was inflicted upon American shipping.