On the night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson made a decision that would echo through American history. Without orders from Washington, he moved his small Union garrison from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This clandestine move, carried out in the darkness, may well have been the final cause that made Fort Sumter the first objective in an unavoidable civil war. Anderson had written privately that “the clouds are threatening and the storm may break at any moment,” and he knew that if it all began to come apart, Sumter was the place to make a stand.
Tension in Charleston had been building for months. The federal soldiers and local citizens had cut off virtually all casual and business exchanges. Two days before Christmas, a message arrived from Secretary Floyd that seemed to suggest Anderson should surrender if attacked rather than suffer pointless casualties. But Anderson was committed to his post.
In fact, it would take three bullets to knock him out of action during the coming fight. When South Carolina seceded and demanded the evacuation of Fort Sumter, Anderson refused. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces under General P. G.
T. Beauregard opened fire. The bombardment lasted over 30 hours, with some estimating as many as 36 hours of shelling. The Confederates fired 3,341 shells at the fort.
Despite the devastation, with all the barracks in ruins, incredibly only four men were injured, each by flying bits of brick and mortar. Inside the fort, the fires grew so great that Anderson ordered all but five of the powder barrels thrown into the harbor. When Confederate officer James Chesnut Jr. delivered the demand for surrender, Anderson asked if the terms came directly from Beauregard.
After consultation, all agreed to reject the notion of surrender. Anderson wrote out his response and handed it to Chesnut, adding quietly, “And if you do not batter us to pieces, we shall be starved out in a few days. ”
Though visibly shaken, Anderson warmly shook hands with each member and said, “If we never meet in this world again, God grant that we may meet in the next. ” The evacuation was agreed upon, with the Union garrison to leave the next day.
During the 46th cannon salute on April 14, a tragic accident occurred. Private Daniel Hough rammed another cartridge into his gun before it had been swabbed, causing an explosion. Saddened by surrender and shocked by the tragedy, Anderson cut short the salute at 50 guns. One witness recalled, “I sprang out of bed and on my knees prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before.
” The first shot from the 10-inch mortar at Fort Sumter propelled 31 million Americans into the black abyss of Civil War. Confederate officer Louis T. Wigfall, who had most of the story, later remembered, “I was fearful that Major Anderson did not intend to fire at all. It would have cheapened our conquest of the fort if no hostile defense had been made and still more increased the disgrace of failure.
” Union officer Abner Doubleday responded in the same tone, “There is a trifling difference of opinion between us and our neighbor opposite and we are trying to settle it. ”
The origins of the conflict stretched back to the presidency of James Buchanan, who did not believe a state could secede, but if one did, he did not believe the federal government could coerce that state back into the Union. This uncertainty left the nation drifting toward disaster. When Lincoln was elected, Southern fire-eaters pushed for secession, and men like Wigfall were hell-bent on an independent Southern Confederacy.
They were willing to use force to bring it about, and Wigfall, known for his violent nature, created a military title he did not hold at Fort Sumter and demanded Anderson surrender when not authorized to do so. The war that followed lasted four years. Anderson, who had evacuated the fort with his flag, would return to Fort Sumter four years to the day later to raise that same flag in a ceremony marking the Union victory. The Confederate victory at Fort Sumter proved short-lived, but it set the stage for the bloodiest conflict in American history.
Wigfall fled to Europe after the war, eventually returning first to Canada, then to Memphis. He never applied for a pardon and therefore was not a citizen, unable to hold any public office. After his release in September 1865, he became associated with the New York Daily News rather than returning to his native Virginia. The war-long feud between Confederate leaders and President Jefferson Davis proved troublesome for not only Confederate command but common soldiers who bounced from one commander to another.
The fall of Fort Sumter also marked the beginning of a new era of warfare, one that would test the very fabric of the nation.