At daylight, April 13th, all the batteries again opened, and the new twelve-pounder Blakely rifle, which had arrived but four days before from abroad,[204] caused the wounding of a sergeant and three men by the fragments thrown off from the interior of the wall by its deep penetration. An engineer employed was severely wounded by a fragment of shell. Hot shot now became frequent, and at nine o’clock the officers’ quarters were set afire. As it was evident the fire would soon surround the magazine, every one not at the guns was employed to get out powder; but only fifty barrels could be removed to the casements, when it became necessary from the spread of the flames to close the magazine. The whole range of the officers’ quarters was soon in flames, and the clouds of smoke and cinders sent into the casements set on fire many of the men’s beds and boxes, making the retention of the powder so dangerous that all but five barrels were thrown into the sea.[205]
By eleven o’clock the fire and smoke were driven by the wind in such masses into the point where the men had taken refuge that suffocation appeared imminent. “The roaring and crackling of the flames, the dense masses of whirling smoke, the bursting of the enemy’s shells, and our own, which were exploding in the burning rooms, the crashing of the shot and the sound of masonry falling in every direction made the fort a pandemonium.... There was a tower at each angle of the fort. One of these, containing great quantities of shells, ... was almost completely shattered by successive explosions. The massive wooden gates, studded with iron nails, were burned, and the wall built behind them was now a heap of débris, so that the main entrance was wide open for an assaulting party.”[206]
But however great the apparent damage and the discomfort and danger while the fire lasted, the firing could have been resumed “as soon as the walls cooled sufficiently to open the magazines, and then, having blown down the wall projecting above the parapet, so as to get rid of the flying bricks, and built up the main gates with stones and rubbish, the fort would actually have been in a more defensible condition than when the action commenced.”[207]
But want of men, want of food, and want of powder together made a force majeure against which further strife was useless; and when, about 1 P.M., the flag-staff was shot away, though the flag was at once flown from an improvised staff, a boat was sent from the commanding officer at Morris Island, bringing Colonel (Ex-Senator) Wigfall and a companion bearing a white flag, to inquire if the fort had surrendered.
Being allowed entrance, Major Anderson was sought for, and Wigfall, using Beauregard’s name, offered Anderson his own terms. Wigfall exhibited a white handkerchief from the parapet, and this being noticed brought from Beauregard himself Colonel Chesnut, Colonel Roger A. Pryor, Colonel William Porcher Miles, and Captain Lee, followed soon by Beauregard’s adjutant-general, Jones, Ex-Governor Manning, and Colonel Alston. It transpired that Wigfall had not seen Beauregard for two days, and that his visit was wholly unauthorized. The proper authorities, however, being now at hand, arrangements were concluded at 7 P.M., Anderson surrendering (after some correspondence), with permission to salute the flag as it was hauled down, to march out with colors flying and drums beating and with arms and private baggage.[208]
Noticing the disappearance of the colors, a flag of truce was sent in from the squadron outside, and arrangements made for carrying the garrison north. Next morning, Sunday, April 14th, with a salute of fifty guns, the flag was finally hauled down. It had been Anderson’s intention to fire a hundred guns, but a lamentable accident occurred in the premature discharge of one, by which one man was killed, another mortally wounded, and four others seriously injured. This accident delayed the departure until 4 P.M., when the little company of some eighty men, accompanied by the forty laborers,[209] marched out of the gate with their flags flying and drums beating. The steamer Isabel carried Anderson and his men to the Baltic, and at nightfall they were on their way north.
April 15th, the day after the surrender, the President issued his proclamation calling “forth the militia of the several states of the Union” to the number of seventy-five thousand men, in order to suppress “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law,” and “to cause the laws to be duly executed.” Congress was called to convene July 4th. An immediate effect of the proclamation was the secession of Virginia, April 17th, the conservative elements of the state convention, although in the majority, being overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and impetus of the secession attack. Another prompt result was the formation of the northwestern counties into what is now West Virginia.
Fox’s expedition, however abortive in a physical sense, did much more than attempt to succor Sumter; it was the instrument through which the fort was held to the accomplishment of the fateful mistake of the Confederacy in striking the first blow. It prevented the voluntary yielding of the fort, and was an exhibition of the intention of the government to hold its own. It was thus elemental in its effects. Had Anderson withdrawn and hauled down his flag without a shot from the South, it would have been for the Federal government to strike the first blow of war; and its call for men would have met with a different response to that which came from the electric impulse which the firing upon the flag caused to vibrate through the North. This expectation was the basis of Lincoln’s determination. Almost alone, unmovable by Cabinet or War Department, he saw with the certainty of the seer what holding Sumter meant, and continued on the unchangeable way which from the first he had taken. In his letter of sympathy to Fox, May 1st, he said: “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.”[210]
The enthusiastic response of the North to the proclamation was witness to the truth of Lincoln’s view, as well as to the North’s determination that the offended dignity of the Union should be avenged, its strongholds regained, its boundaries made intact, and that the United States be proved to be a nation. It was for this the Union fought; the freeing of the blacks was but a natural and necessary incident. The assault upon Sumter was the knife driven by the hand of the South itself into the vitals of slavery.