Decisive Battles of America

by Unknown

Shortly after noon, April 11th, a boat bearing a white flag and three officers, the senior being Colonel James Chesnut, recently a United States senator, pushed off from a Charleston wharf and arrived at Sumter at half-past three. The officers being conducted to Anderson, a demand for the evacuation of the work was delivered. The officers of the fort were summoned, and after an hour’s discussion it was determined, without dissent, to refuse the demand, and a written refusal was sent, in which Anderson regretted that his sense of honor and his obligations to his government prevented his compliance.[194] Anderson accompanied the messengers as far as the main gate, where he asked, “Will General Beauregard open his batteries without further notice to me?” Colonel Chesnut replied, “I think not,” adding, “No, I can say to you that he will not, without giving you further notice.” On this Anderson unwisely remarked that he would be starved out anyway in a few days if Beauregard did not batter him to pieces with his guns. Chesnut asked if he might report this to Beauregard. Anderson declined to give it such character, but said it was the fact.[195]

This information, telegraphed to Montgomery, elicited the reply: “Do not desire needlessly to bombard Fort Sumter. If Major Anderson will state the time at which, as indicated by him, he will evacuate, and agree that in the mean time he will not use his guns against us unless ours should be employed against Sumter, you are authorized thus to avoid the effusion of blood. If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable.”[196]

A second note from Beauregard was presented that night, and after a conference with his officers of three hours, in which the question of food was the main consideration, Anderson replied, “I will, if provided with proper and necessary means of transportation, evacuate Fort Sumter by noon on the 15th instant ... should I not receive prior to that time controlling instructions from my government or additional supplies.” The terms of the reply were considered by the messengers “manifestly futile,” and at 3.20 A.M. of the 12th the following note was handed by Beauregard’s aides, Chesnut and Lee, to Anderson: “By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.”[197]

Meantime Fox, intrusted with the general charge of the relief expedition, was sent by the President, March 30th, to New York, with verbal instructions to prepare for the voyage but to make no binding engagements. Not having received the written authority expected, he returned to Washington April 2d, and on the 4th the final decision was reached, and Fox was informed that a messenger would be sent to the authorities at Charleston to notify them of the President’s action. Fox mentioned to the President that he would have but nine days to charter vessels and reach Charleston, six hundred and thirty-two miles distant. He arrived at New York April 5th, bearing an order from General Scott to Lieutenant-Colonel H. L. Scott (son-in-law and aide-de-camp to the general-in-chief), embracing all his wants and directing Colonel Scott to give in his name all necessary instructions. Colonel Scott ridiculed the idea of relief, and his indifference caused the loss of half a day of precious time, besides furnishing recruits who, Fox complained, were “totally unfit” for the service they were sent on.[198]

Fox at once engaged the large steamer Baltic for troops and stores, and, after great difficulty, obtained three tugs, the Uncle Ben, Freeborn, and Yankee, the last fitted to throw hot water. The Pocahontas, Pawnee, and the revenue-cutter Harriet Lane, as already mentioned, were to be a part of the force, which thus, with the Powhatan, included four armed vessels, the last being of considerable power. The Pawnee, Commander Rowan, sailed from Washington the 9th; the Pocahontas, Captain Gillis, from Norfolk the 10th; the Harriet Lane, Captain Faunce, from New York the 8th; the Baltic, Captain Fletcher, the 9th. The Powhatan was already far on her way to Pensacola.

The Baltic arrived at the rendezvous, ten miles east of Charleston bar, at 3 A.M. of the 12th, and found there the Harriet Lane; at six the Pawnee arrived; the Powhatan was not visible. The Baltic, followed by the Harriet Lane, stood in toward the land, where heavy guns were heard and the smoke and shells from the batteries which had opened that morning on Sumter were distinctly visible. Fox stood out to inform Rowan, of the Pawnee. Rowan asked for a pilot, declaring his intention of going in and sharing the fate of his brethren of the army. Fox went aboard the Pawnee and informed him that he would answer for it that the government did not expect such a sacrifice, having settled maturely upon the policy in instructions to Captain Mercer and himself. The Nashville, from New York, and a number of merchant vessels off the bar, gave the appearance of the presence of a large naval fleet.

The weather continued very bad, with a heavy sea. No tugboats had arrived; the tug Freeborn did not leave New York; the Uncle Ben was driven into Wilmington by the gale; the Yankee did not arrive off Charleston bar until April 15th, too late for any service; neither the Pawnee nor the Harriet Lane had boats or men to carry supplies; the Baltic stood out to the rendezvous and signalled all night for the expected Powhatan. The next morning, the 13th, was thick and foggy, with a heavy ground-swell, and the Baltic, feeling her way in, touched on Rattlesnake Shoal, but without damage; a great volume of black smoke was seen from Sumter. No tugboats had yet arrived, and a schooner near by, loaded with ice, was seized and preparations made to load her for entering the following night. Going aboard the Pawnee, Fox now learned that a note from Captain Mercer of the Powhatan mentioned that he had been detached by superior authority and that the ship had gone elsewhere; though Fox had left New York two days later than the Powhatan, he had no intimation of the change. At 2 P.M., April 13th, the Pocahontas arrived, and the squadron, powerless for relief, through the absence of the Powhatan and the tugs, was obliged to witness the progress of the bombardment.[199]

“About 4 A.M. on the twelfth,” says Doubleday, “I was awakened by some one groping about my room in the dark and calling out my name.” This was Anderson, who had come to inform his second in command of the information just received of the intention of the Confederates to open fire an hour later.[200] At 4.30, the Confederates being able to make out the outline of the fort, a gun at Fort Johnson was fired as the signal to open; the first shotted gun was then fired from Morris Island by Edmund Ruffin, an aged secessionist from Virginia, who had long, in pamphlet and speech, advocated separation from the Union. The fire from the batteries at once became general.

The fort began its return at seven o’clock. All the officers and men, including the engineers, had been divided into three reliefs of two hours each, and the forty-three workmen yet remaining all volunteered for duty. It was, however, an absurdly meagre force to work such a number of guns and to be pitted against the surrounding batteries, manned by more than six thousand men. The number of cartridges was so reduced by the middle of the day, though the six needles available were kept steadily at work in making cartridge-bags, that the firing had to slacken and be confined to the six guns bearing toward Moultrie and the batteries on the west end of Sullivan’s Island. The mortar fire had become very accurate, so that, when the 13-inch shells “came down in a vertical direction and buried themselves in the parade-ground, their explosion shook the fort like an earthquake.”[201] The horizontal fire also grew in accuracy, and Anderson, to save his men, withdrew them from the barbette guns and used those of the lower tiers only. Unfortunately, these were of too light a caliber to be effective against the Morris Island batteries, the shot rebounding without effect from the face of the iron-clad battery there, as well as from the floating iron-clad battery moored behind the sea-wall at Sullivan’s Island. The withdrawal of the men from the heavier battery could only be justified by the already foregone result, and no doubt this was in Anderson’s mind. The garrison was reduced to pork and water, and, however willing, it could not with such meagre food withstand the strain of the heavy labor of working the guns; to add to the difficulties, the guns, strange to say, were not provided with breech-sights, and these had to be improvised with notched sticks.[202]

The shells from the batteries set fire to the barracks three times during the day, and the precision of the vertical fire was such that the four 8-inch and one 10-inch columbiad, planted in the parade, could not be used. Half the shells fired from the seventeen mortars engaged came within, or exploded above, the parapet of the fort, and only about ten buried themselves in the soft earth of the parade without exploding. Two of the barbette guns were struck by the fire from Moultrie, which also damaged greatly the roof of the barracks and the stair towers. None of the shot came through. The day closed stormy and with a high tide, without any material damage to the strength of the fort. Throughout the night the Confederate batteries threw shell every ten or fifteen minutes. The garrison was occupied until midnight in making cartridge-bags, for which all the extra clothing was cut up and all the coarse paper and extra hospital sheets used.[203]