CHAPTER TEN:
Hostilities Commence in the Charleston Harbor
How Lincoln Manipulated Public Opinion
Such was Lincoln's dilemma: On the one hand, he was being pressured by the industrial and banking interests of the New England and Midwestern States, who were clamoring for the removal of the South as a viable competitor in the international and domestic markets. In addition to these were the Republican politicians who saw war against the South as the surest means to secure their newly obtained control of the Government. However, on the other hand, Lincoln was faced with an overwhelmingly popular anti-war sentiment among the Northern citizens. According to the 1 January 1861 edition of the Boston Daily Advertiser: "The people desire no war; no attack upon South Carolina; nor do they wish to see her needlessly supplied with any pretext for the beginning of hostilities."(1) The mood of the people throughout the North was so strong in favor of allowing the Southern States to depart in peace that if the Government were to make any aggressive move at all at Fort Sumter, upon which all eyes were focused, Lincoln would be denounced by "a thousand northern presses... as a provoker of war."(2) Most of the people in the North were not fooled by the conciliatory tone of Lincoln's Inaugural Address of 4 March 1861. Only a few days after the speech had been delivered, the Democratic editors of the New York Herald stated:
The possession of Forts Sumter and Pickens is the avowed intention of President Davis and his Cabinet. But when the nation turns to Washington to look for information as to the design of the military and naval preparations of the Northern government, it is met either with mysterious silence, or conflicting stories, or ambiguous utterances, like the responses of the Delphic oracles.
Now, the effect of all this mystery, so foreign to the genius of a republican government, is most disastrous to the whole country. As to the North, with its idle capitalists, surplus breadstuffs and its enterprising spirit chafing for employment, the policy of the administration is most ruinous to it. All the operations of trade and commerce and manufactures are paralyzed and fettered by uncertainty, which is more fatal to business interests than the worst reality. Merchants cannot make their calculations, and dare not invest till they have some idea of what is before them. If it be war, they will know what to do. If it be peace, they will promptly act accordingly. But suspense is death to all enterprise. So destructive to the public welfare is the conduct of the administration that the people of the North will not stand it much longer.
In the South the know-nothing, do-nothing policy of Mr. Lincoln’s administration is equally obnoxious. It compels the confederacy to keep up a standing army at a terrible expense. At the lowest calculation the cost of maintaining ten thousand men for the year is five millions of dollars. The Confederate States will no longer submit to this expense without coming to blows; and the irritating, tantalizing course of our government, and their marchings and countermarchings, will probably soon drive the Cabinet at Montgomery into a solution of the difficulty, by taking the initiative and capturing the two forts in its waters held by the United States troops.
This we have no doubt is what Mr. Lincoln wants, for it would give him the opportunity of throwing upon the Southern confederacy the responsibility of commencing hostilities. But the country and posterity will hold him just as responsible as if he struck the first blow. The provocation to assault is often more culpable than the assault itself.(3)
From present appearances we know what we may expect in the future. We see that all the professions of peace uttered by Mr. Lincoln and others were mere idle talk, or else made to lull the country into a state of false security till the administration concluded its loans and was ready to strike a blow. Fort Pickens, on its lonely sandbar, may, in its ruins in years hereafter, tell of the bloody battle of Pensacola which commenced the civil war that desolated the United States in the year of our Lord 1861. Our fervent prayer is that it may not, and that those enemies of their country who cry for blood may be disappointed. But of this there seems now to be little hope.(4)
Similar sentiments likewise appeared in the Baltimore Sun around the same time:
The Inaugural, as a whole, breathes the spirit of mischief. It has only a conditional conservatism — that is, the lack of ability or some inexpediency to do what it would. It assumes despotic authority, and intimates the design to exercise that authority to any extent of war and bloodshed, qualified only by the withholding of the requisite means to the end by the American people. The argumentation of the address is puerile. Indeed, it has no quality entitled to the dignity of an argument. It is a shaky specimen of special pleading, by way of justifying the unrighteous character and deeds of the fanaticism which, lifted into power, may be guilty, as it is capable, of any atrocities. There is no Union spirit in the address, it is sectional and mischievous, and studiously withholds any sign of recognition of that equality of the States upon which the Union can alone be maintained. If it means what it says, it is the knell and requiem of the Union, and the death of hope.(5)
Lincoln's former political opponent, Illinois Democrat Stephen Douglas, had also warned the American people a month earlier that the Republican leaders who put Lincoln into office "are striving to break up the Union under the pretense of preserving it," and that "they are struggling to overthrow the Constitution while professing undying attachment to it, and a willingness to make any sacrifice to maintain it... [and] are trying to plunge the country into a cruel war as the surest means of destroying the Union upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting public property."(6) Such warnings were resounding throughout the North and the South. In fact, before the fall of Fort Sumter, an estimated two-thirds of the newspapers in the North “were the virtual allies of the Secessionists, their apologists, their champions.”(7)
Lincoln's plan to shift these circumstances in his favor, and to put "the rebellion... in 'the wrong,'"(8) was an exercise of the treacherous ingenuity of a would-be despot. In its resolution of 15 February 1861, the Confederate Congress authorized the C.S. President to appoint "a commission of three persons" to be "sent to the Government of the United States of America, for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that Government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two Governments, upon principles of right, justice, equity, and good faith."(9) Lincoln, however, refused to see these Peace Commissioners upon their arrival at Washington, as also did William Seward, who reasoned that he could do nothing that could be interpreted as a recognition of the Confederate States as an independent power.(10) However, Seward agreed to meet with intermediary John A. Campbell of the U.S. Supreme Court, through whom he assured the Peace Commissioners, on or around 15 March 1861, that "the order for the evacuation of Sumter had been made."(11) Five days later, when questioned why no action had been taken by the occupants of the fort to evacuate as promised, Seward "spoke of his ability to carry through his policy with confidence," and "he accounted for the delay as accidental, and not involving the integrity of his assurance that the evacuation would take place."(12) On the first day of April 1861, Seward again declared that "the President may desire to supply Sumter, but will not do so," and that there was "no design to reinforce Fort Sumter" [emphasis in original].(13) When rumors began to circulate about the preparation of a secret expedition to the Pensacola and the Charleston harbors, Campbell expressed his "anxiety and concern" in a letter to Seward dated the seventh of April.(14) Seward's response was as follows: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept. Wait and see."(15) Oddly, Seward's written response was omitted from the records compiled by the War Department in 1880.
Judge Campbell's personal testimony, given later that same year, sheds further light on these events:
When I visited Governor Seward, I had not had any communication with General [Jefferson] Davis, or any member of the Executive Department of the Montgomery Government. The first knowledge I had of the demand of the Commissioners for recognition, or of Mr. Seward's embarrassment, was derived from Judge [Thomas A.] Nelson [Representative from Tennessee] and Mr. Seward. I offered to write to General Davis and ask him to restrain his commissioners. I supposed that Mr. Seward desired to prevent the irritation and complaint that would naturally follow from the rejection of the Commissioners in the South, and the reaction that their [recognition] would have at the North. He informed me that Sumter was to be evacuated, that Mr. [Thurlow] Weed [of New York] said, "This was a sharp and bitter pang, which he [Weed] was anxious might be spared to them." Mr. Seward authorised me to communicate the fact of the evacuation to Mr. Davis, and the precise object was to induce him to render his commissioners inactive. I did not anticipate having any other interview with Mr. Seward. I supposed that Sumter would be evacuated in the course of a very few days, and without any other action on my part. When upon the second and third interviews with him I found there was to be delay, I conversed with Judge Nelson as to the delicacy of my position, and it was at his suggestion and by his counsel that I agreed to be the "intermediary" until Sumter was evacuated. Neither of us doubted that the fort was to be surrendered or abandoned.... I asked Governor Seward about the evacuation of the fort. Without any verbal reply, he wrote: "The President may desire to supply Sumter, but will not do so without giving notice to Governor [Francis] Pickens." Upon reading this, I asked if the President had any design to attempt to supply Sumter. His reply contained an observation of the President. That I pass. But he said he did not believe any attempt would be made to supply Sumter, and there was no design to reinforce it. I told him if that were the case, I should not employ this language, that it would be interpreted as a design to attempt a supply, and that, if such a thing were believed in Charleston, they would bombard the fort, that they did not regard the surrender of Sumter as open to question, and when they did, they would proceed to extremities. He left the State Department, I remaining there till his return; and, on his return, he wrote these words: "I am satisfied that the Government will not undertake to supply Sumter without giving notice to Governor Pickens." This excluded the matter of desire, and with what had taken place, left the impression that if any attempt were made it would be an open, declared, and peaceful offer to supply the fort, which, being resisted by the Carolinians, the fort would be abandoned as a military necessity and to spare the effusion of blood — the odium of resistance and of the evacuation being thrown upon the late Administration and the Confederate States. Had these counsels prevailed — had the policy been marked with candour and moderation — I am not sure that even before this the fruit might have been seen ripening among the States in renewed relations of kindness and goodwill, to be followed ere long by a suitable political and civil union, adequate to the security of both sections at home and abroad. The ideas of union and a common country, as applied to all the States, are now simply obsolete [emphasis in original].(16)
It is often claimed by modern historians that this gross display of bad faith was not the fault of Lincoln, for Seward is alleged to have spoken on his own authority without the knowledge of his superior. However, Jefferson Davis dispelled such a claim in the following:
The absurdity of any such attempt to disassociate the action of the President from that of his Secretary, and to relieve the former of responsibility for the conduct of the latter, is too evident to require argument or comment. It is impossible to believe that, during this whole period of nearly a month, Mr. Lincoln was ignorant of the communications that were passing between the Confederate Commissioners and Mr. Seward, through the distinguished member of the Supreme Court — still holding his seat as such — who was acting as intermediary. On one occasion, Judge Campbell informs us that the Secretary, in the midst of an important interview, excused himself for the purpose of conferring with the President before giving a final answer, and left his visitor for some time, awaiting his return from that conference, when the answer was given, avowedly and directly proceeding from the President.
If, however, it were possible to suppose that Mr. Seward was acting on his own responsibility, and practicing a deception upon his own chief, as well as upon the Confederate authorities, in the pledges which he made to the latter, it is nevertheless certain that the principal facts were brought to light within a few days after the close of the efforts at negotiation. Yet the Secretary of State was not impeached and brought to trial for the grave offense of undertaking to conduct the most momentous and vital transactions that had been or could be brought before the Government of the United States, without the knowledge and in opposition to the will of the President, and for having involved the Government in dishonor, if not in disaster. He was not even dismissed from office, but continued to be the chief officer of the Cabinet and confidential adviser of the President, as he was afterward of the ensuing Administration, occupying that station during two consecutive terms. No disavowal of his action, no apology nor explanation, was ever made. Politically and legally, the President is unquestionably responsible in all cases for the action of any member of his Cabinet, and in this case it is as preposterous to attempt to dissever from him the moral, as it would be impossible to relieve him of the legal, responsibility that rests upon the Government of the United States for the systematic series of frauds perpetrated by its authority.(17)
On the fourth of April, Seward made the following statement to London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell: "It would not become the spirit of the American Government, or of the Federal system, to use armed force in subjugating the Southern States against the will of the majority of the people."(18) Six days later, Seward officially wrote to Minister to England Charles Francis Adams:
[The President] would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs, namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, even although he were disposed to question that proposition. But in fact the President willingly accepts it as true. Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State. This Federal Republican system of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one most unfitted for such a labour.(19)
On the eighth of April, Robert S. Chew delivered the following message to South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens: "I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms or ammunition, will be made, without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the Fort."(20) The Northern press picked up on the "provisions only" clause in Lincoln's message and widely circulated the story that the President merely wished to transport food to a helpless garrison of American soldiers "who were starving under the folds of the Stars and Stripes."(21)
At the same time all these public and private assurances of peace were being made, Lincoln was already secretly preparing to reinforce Fort Sumter. On the twenty-ninth of March, he had ordered that three ships — the Pocahontas, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane — together with three hundred men and provisions be made ready to sail for the Charleston harbor.(22) These orders were all marked private. On the first of April, he sent a message to Commandant Andrew H. Foote at Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York to "fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible moment under sealed orders."(23) These instructions were confirmed with another telegram which contained these words: "You will fit out the Powhatan without delay. Lieutenant Porter will relieve Captain Mercer in command of her. She is bound on secret service; and you will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out."(24) In all, the so-called "Relief Squadron" consisted of eight warships, carrying twenty-six guns and one thousand, four hundred men(25) — hardly "provisions only."
The “Systematic Duplicity” of the Lincoln Adminstration
In the words of George Lunt, "The external aspect of the affair off Charleston which precipitated the war is that of a boy 'spoiling for a fight' who places a chip on the rim of his hat and dares his competitor to knock it off."(26) In this case, Lincoln was the "boy 'spoiling for a fight.'" Upon learning of Lincoln's treachery, the Confederate Government at Montgomery authorized General Beauregard in Charleston to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter. The official dispatch to Major Anderson read as follows:
Headquarters Provisional Army, C.S.A.
Charleston, S.C., April 11, 1861, 2 P.M.
Sir: The Government of the Confederate States has hitherto forborne from any hostile demonstration against Fort Sumter, in the hope that the Government of the United States, with a view to the amicable adjustment of all questions between the two Governments, and to avert the calamities of war, would voluntarily evacuate it. There was reason at one time to believe that such would be the course pursued by the Government of the United States; and, under that impression, my Government has refrained from making any demand for the surrender of the fort.
But the Confederate States can no longer delay assuming actual possession of a fortification commanding the entrance of one of their harbors, and necessary to its defense and security.
I am ordered by the Government of the Confederate States to demand the evacuation of Fort Sumter. My aides, Colonel Chesnut and Captain Lee, are authorized to make such demand of you. All proper facilities will be afforded for the removal of yourself and command, together with company arms and property, and all private property, to any post in the United States which you may elect. The flag which you have upheld so long and with so much fortitude, under the most trying circumstances, may be saluted by you on taking it down.
Colonel Chesnut and Captain Lee will, for a reasonable time, await your answer.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
G.T. Beauregard
Brigadier-General commanding.(27)
When Major Anderson, who apparently was not privy to Lincoln's secret plans, failed to evacuate, the fort was fired upon and eventually fell into the hands of the Confederacy on 13 April 1861 after thirty-three hours of bombardment. After realizing that he had been used by the Lincoln Administration to lull the Confederate Commissioners into a false sense of security, Judge Campbell wrote the following words to Seward on the thirteenth of April:
I think no candid man will read over what I have written, and consider for a moment what is going on at Sumter, but will agree that the equivocating conduct of the Administration, as measured and interpreted in connection with these promises, is the proximate cause of the great calamity.
I have a profound conviction that the telegrams of the 8th of April of General Beauregard, and of the 10th of April of General Walker, the Secretary of War, can be referred to nothing else than their belief that there has been systematic duplicity practiced on them through me. It is under an impressive sense of the weight of this responsibility that I submit to you these things for your explanation.(28)
The object of deception already accomplished, Campbell received no reply to this letter nor to that of the following week in which he reiterated his demand for an explanation.
Further evidence of the "unscrupulous cunning"(29) practiced by Lincoln was the little known fact that the Powhatan, under the command of Lieutenant David D. Porter, sailed under disguise. In a letter to the Secretary of the Navy dated 11 May 1861, Lincoln personally assumed the responsibility "for any apparent or real irregularity... in connection with that vessel."(30) Not only was her name painted out, as Captain Montgomery C. Meigs mentioned in a letter to William Seward,(31) but she was flying the flag of Great Britain(32) "so that she deceived those who had known her."(33)
It is evident that Lincoln had begun to formulate a plan to reinforce Sumter even before his inauguration. In fact, on 12 December 1860, a full three months before he had taken the oath of office, Lincoln was already acquainting at least one of his future subordinates with his policy of usurpation when he sent the following, and characteristically secret, message to General Winfield Scott: "Please present my respects to the general, and tell him, confidentially, I shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can to either hold or retake the forts, as the case may require, at and after the inauguration."(34) Two weeks later, Robert Anderson, contrary to his orders of 15 November 1860,(35) mysteriously abandoned his position at Fort Moultrie and moved his forces to Fort Sumter. There can be little doubt that this action, which sparked profound resentment from the South Carolinians, as well as confusion among his superiors in the War Department(36) and alarm from President Buchanan,(37) was accomplished at the urging of General Scott in response to Lincoln's December telegram. Without any pretense of lawful authority whatsoever, Lincoln was thus interfering with and undermining the official capacity of the U.S. Government as a party to a morally binding agreement which Lincoln would later ridicule in his address to Congress on 4 July 1861 as a "quasi armistice."(38) It should come as no surprise that Lincoln would similarly disregard another obligation to which the U.S. Government was bound — the Constitution for the United States of America. It is also noteworthy that Lincoln was considering, if not actually planning, a show of hostility against the people of South Carolina at least eight days before that State's secession from the Union, thereby exposing as mere subterfuge his later designation of the South Carolinians, and their fellow Southerners, as "insurrectionists." The American people would have been justly alarmed had the light of discovery revealed Lincoln's secret agenda for all to see.
Were Major Anderson's Men Really Starving?
Allusion has already been made to the alleged fact that Anderson and his men had been cut off from the outside world by the Confederates and were facing starvation. The veracity of this claim is of no small consequence, since Lincoln's entire justification for the expedition to the Charleston harbor was predicated upon the necessity of supplying the garrison with "provisions only." Having been thoroughly apprised of the danger of sending military reinforcements to the fort by his own Cabinet members, and by Major Anderson himself, Lincoln resorted to an age-old political trick:
From immemorial time, when one group has coveted the possessions of a neighbor, or has seen fit to unloose its legions to enforce its will upon a weaker people, it has unblushingly made resort to a hoary, accepted diplomatic technique; thereupon, a puzzled world has listened to the prospective aggressor's complaint of brutal mistreatment of its nationals residing within the boundaries of the contemplated victim. When it is deemed profitable to arouse the war spirit, nations have found no method comparable to this humanitarian appeal to go to the rescue of those of their own blood.(39)
The myth of Sumter's "starving garrison" has been perpetuated with a nearly unanimous voice by Northern historians and Lincoln biographers. For example, Ida Tarbell, in her widely acclaimed work entitled The Life of Abraham Lincoln, wrote: "Almost the first thing brought to his attention on the morning of his first full day in office was a letter from Major Anderson, the officer in command of Fort Sumter, saying that he had but a week's provisions, and that if the place was to be reinforced so that it could be held, it would take 20,000 good and well-disciplined men to do it.... What was to be done? The garrison must not be allowed to starve."(40) The reader is invited to compare this paraphrase of Anderson's report with what was actually written: "I confess that I would not be willing to risk my reputation on an attempt to throw re-enforcements into this harbor within the time for our relief rendered necessary by the limited supply of our provisions, and with a view of holding possession of the same with a force of less than twenty thousand good and well-disciplined men."(41) Somehow, "limited supply of our provisions" translated into Tarbell's narrative as "a week's provisions." Another example of this loose dealing with important historical data, which is prevalent in Northern accounts of the war, is the following quotation from John T. Morse, Jr.: "On the same day [4 March 1861] there came a letter from Major Anderson.... There were shut up in the fort together a certain number of men and a certain quantity of biscuit and of pork; when the men should have eaten the biscuit and the pork, which they would probably do in about four weeks, they would have to go away. The problem thus became direct, simple, and urgent."(42) In his Diary, Secretary Welles likewise mentioned "certain intelligence of a distressing character from Major Anderson at Fort Sumter, stating that his supplies were almost exhausted, that he could get no provisions in Charleston, and that he with his small command would be wholly destitute in about six weeks."(43)
Modern accounts of the Sumter affair have relied upon these contradictory sources to spin a fanciful tale of a "nearly hopeless" situation in which a "woe-filled" Anderson and an "undernourished" command were forced "to choose between starvation and surrender."(44) The fact of the matter, however, is that in his genuine communiqué of 28 February 1861, Anderson made no mention of "a week's provisions," (Tarbell), did not discuss "a certain quantity of biscuit and of pork" which would be exhausted "in about four weeks" (Morse), and certainly gave no indication that he and his men would be "wholly destitute in about six weeks" (Welles). To the contrary, on the twenty-fifth of February, J.G. Foster, Captain of Engineers with the Sumter garrison, wrote to General Joshua G. Totten in Washington that "the health of the command is very good, with no sickness among the officers or men of sufficient importance to take them from a single day's duty. Major Anderson is and has been well, and there is no foundation for the report of his illness."(45) Certainly, if the condition of the garrison was as desperate as it was alleged to have been a week later when Lincoln took office, Foster's letter would certainly have indicated such. Would not starvation or even undernourishment have been "of sufficient importance" to mention in his report if such were really the condition of Anderson's men? Secretary Welles also claimed that Anderson "could get no provisions in Charleston," and yet Foster contradicted this statement in his letter to Totten dated the twenty-sixth of February that "our supplies and mails come from town [Charleston] as usual."(46)
Foster's testimony requires closer examination. As Jefferson Davis pointed, "It should not be forgotten that, during the early occupation of Fort Sumter by a garrison the attitude of which was at least offensive, no restriction had been put upon their privilege of purchasing in Charleston fresh provisions, or any delicacies or comforts not directly tending to the supply of the means needful to hold the fort for an indefinite time."(47) A statement which appeared in the New York Herald of 8 March 1861 supports Davis' assertion: "The War Department today received letters from Major Anderson dated the 4th but they contain nothing of especial importance. The most friendly feelings exist between him and the South Carolina authorities. Postal facilities are still open to him, and privileges of marketing, to a limited extent, continue."(48) Anderson's access to provisions and the delivery of mail to the fort was not terminated until the seventh of April — only after it had become known to the Confederate Government that a war expedition had been secretly launched and would soon arrive at the Charleston harbor. The historical record clearly indicates that, contrary to the propaganda put forth by Lincoln, spread by the Northern press, and then later perpetuated by Northern historians after the close of the war, Anderson and his men were by no means starving. In his report of 26 December 1860, Anderson announced that he had "one year's supply of hospital stores and about four months' supply of provisions" for his command.(49) Three days later, he wrote in a letter to Robert N. Gourdin, a prominent citizen of Charleston, "I have supplies of provisions, of all kinds, to last my command about five months, but it would add to our comfort to be enabled to make purchases of fresh meats and so on, and to shop in the city."(50)
Even though Anderson had caused resentment from the South Carolinians by transferring his command from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter — an act which the State authorities viewed as a breach of the pledge of the U.S. Government not to reinforce Sumter — they were still willing to attempt to pacify the situation by offering to provision the garrison now set in hostile array against them. It should be noted that on 28 December 1860, Anderson had sent this message to Adjutant General Cooper: "[The Governor] knows not how entirely the city of Charleston is in my power. I can cut his communication off from the sea, and thereby prevent the reception of supplies, and close the harbor, even at night, by destroying the lighthouses."(51) Since all of Anderson's communications with his government in Washington, D.C. had to go through the authorities in Charleston, he knew that this threat to close the Charleston harbor would be read by Governor Pickens. Nevertheless, on 19 January 1861, less than a month after this threat was made, South Carolina Secretary of War D.F. Jamison sent the following message from the Governor to Anderson: "Sir, I am instructed by his excellency the governor to inform you that he has directed an officer of the State to procure and carry over with your mails each day to Fort Sumter such supplies of fresh meat and vegetables as you may indicate."(52) Anderson's response is interesting: "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of this date.... I confess I am at a loss to understand the latter part of this message, as I have not represented in any quarter that we were in need of such supplies. As commandant of a military post, I can only have my troops furnished with fresh beef in the manner prescribed by law, and I am compelled, therefore, with due thanks to his excellency, respectfully to decline his offer."(53)
Not having waited for a reply from Anderson, Secretary Jamison had arranged for "two hundred pounds of beef and a lot of vegetables" to be sent over to the fort,(54) which Anderson refused to accept. At this point, Anderson was given free access to the Charleston markets to purchase provisions at his own discretion. This amiable arrangement having been established, Anderson realized that interference from Washington would be a grave mistake and even wrote to Adjutant-General Cooper on 30 January 1861, "I do hope that no attempt will be made by our friends to throw supplies in; their doing so would do more harm than good."(55) On the seventeenth of March, Anderson indicated that he was "satisfied with the existing arrangement"(56) and on the first of April, Second Lieutenant Norman J. Hall reported to Anderson that there was "at least thirty-five days of comfortable subsistence for the command."(57) Thus, the U.S. Government's own records not only prove that Anderson's men were well-provisioned all along, but it also shows the popular caricature of the South Carolinians as "fire eaters" set to inaugurate bloodshed at the slightest provocation to be utterly false.
Endnotes
1. Boston Daily Advertiser, 1 January 1861; quoted by Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 405.
2. Josiah Gilbert Holland, Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, Massachusetts: Gurdon Bill, 1866), page 294.
3. New York Herald, 6 March 1861.
4. Editorial: "The Fearful and Threatening Aspect of the Revolution," op. cit., 8 March 1861.
5. Baltimore Sun, March 1861; quoted by Greeley, American Conflict, Volume I, page 428 (footnote).
6. Stephen Douglas, letter to Memphis (Tennessee) Daily Appeal, 2 February 1861; quoted by Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods, page 152.
7. New York Tribune, quoted by Greeley, American Conflict, Volume I, page 454.
8. Lincoln, quoted by Charles William Ramsdell, "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," in The Journal of Southern History, February-November 1937, page 286.
9. Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America (Richmond, Virginia: R.M. Smith, Printer to Congress, 1864), page 92.
10. Frank Moore (editor), The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1861), Volume I, page 51.
11. William H. Seward to John A. Campbell, quoted by Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, page 268.
12. Campbell, quoted by Davis, op. cit., page 270.
13. Seward, quoted by Campbell in letter to Seward, 13 April 1861; in Davis, op. cit., page 683.
14. Campbell to Seward, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume IV, page 259.
15. Seward to Campbell, quoted by Johnstone, Truth of the War Conspiracy, page 35; Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, page 273.
16. Campbell, letter to William B. Reed of Pennsylvania, 5 June 1861; quoted by McHenry, Cotton Trade, pages xiii-xv.
17. Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, pages 275-276.
18. Seward, quoted by William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnam, 1863), page 61.
19. Seward, letter to Charles Francis Adams, 10 April 1861; quoted by Pollard, Lost Cause, page 86; Munford, Slavery and Secession, page 299.
20. Simon Cameron to Captain Theodore Talbot, 6 April 1861; in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 245.
21. Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 6 May 1861; in Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, Volume II, page 826.
22. Lincoln to Cameron, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 226; Inclosure No. 1, op. cit., page 227.
23. Lincoln to Andrew H. Foote, in op. cit., page 229.
24. Lincoln to Foote, in op. cit., Series I, Volume IV, page 109. It is interesting to note that this second, and very revealing, telegram was not included in Volume I alongside the first telegram where it logically belonged, but was placed in Volume IV instead. This is but one example of the "mystifying dis-arrangement" of the records which Johnstone referred to as "a work of genius" (Truth of the War Conspiracy, page 3; emphasis in original).
25. Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, page 284.
26. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 485.
27. Pierre G.T. Beauregard to Robert Anderson, 11 April 1861, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 13.
28. Campbell to Seward, 13 April 1861; quoted by Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, page 685. This letter and the one which followed it were also omitted from the records, even though they had been filed in the Confederate States archives and were delivered to the U.S. War Department for inclusion.
29. Jefferson Davis, A Short History of the Confederate States of America (New York: Belford, Clarke and Company, 1890), page 58.
30. Lincoln to the Secretary of the Navy, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 406.
31. Montgomery C. Meigs to William Seward, 10 April 1861; in op. cit., page 369.
32. Charles H. Poor to H.A. Adams, 2 September 1862; in United States War Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896), Series I, Volume IV, page 132.
33. David D. Porter, report of 21 April 1861; in op. cit., page 122.
34. Lincoln, quoted by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York: The Century Company, 1886), Volume III, page 250.
35. Lorenzo Thomas to Anderson, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 73.
36. In a letter to Anderson dated 27 December 1860, Buchanan's Secretary of War John B. Floyd wrote, "Intelligence has reached here this morning that you have abandoned Fort Moultrie, spiked your guns, burned the carriages, and gone to Fort Sumter. It is not believed, because there is no order for any such movement" (op. cit., page 3).
37. In a meeting with Senators Jefferson Davis and R.M.T. Hunter, Buchanan stated, "I call God to witness, you gentlemen, better than anybody, know that this is not only without but against my orders" (quoted by General Samuel W. Crawford, Genesis of the Civil War [New York: J.A. Hill and Company, 1887; emphasis in original], pages 143-144).
38. Lincoln, in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume VII, page 3223.
39. John Shipley Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1941), pages 179-180.
40. Tarbell, Life of Lincoln, Volume III, pages 14-15.
41. Anderson to Samuel Cooper, 28 February 1861; quoted by Simon Cameron, Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 197.
42. John T. Morse, Jr., Abraham Lincoln (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892), Volume I, page 244.
43. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1911), Volume I, page 4.
44. Davis, Brother Against Brother, pages 132-133, 150.
45. J.G. Foster to Joshua G. Totten, Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 186.
46. Foster to Totten, op. cit., page 187.
47. Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, page 289.
48. New York Herald, 8 March 1861.
49. Anderson to Cooper, Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 2.
50. Anderson, quoted by Crawford, Genesis of the Civil War, pages 128-129.
51. Anderson to Cooper, Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 113.
52. D.F. Jamison to Anderson, op. cit., page 144.
53. Anderson to Jamison, ibid.
54. Jamison to L.M. Hatch, op. cit., page 145.
55. Anderson to Cooper, op. cit., page 159.
56. Anderson to Jamison, op. cit., page 220.
57. Norman J. Hall, letter to Anderson, 1 April 1861; op. cit., page 231.
|
