The Coming Fury

by Bruce Catton

  "Fort Sumter should be reduced before the close of the present administration at Washington. If an attack is delayed until after the inauguration of the incoming President of the United States, the troops now gathered in the capital may then be employed in attempting that which, previous to that time, they could not be spared to do. . . . If war can be averted, it will be by making the capture of Fort Sumter a fact accomplished during the continuance of the present Administration, and leaving to the incoming Administration the question of an open declaration of war. . . . Mr. Buchanan cannot resist because he has not the power. Mr. Lincoln may not attack, because the cause of quarrel will have been, or may be considered by him, as past." The governor went on to say that if war did at last come he would of course regret it, but it would simply show that "under the evil passions which blind and mislead those who govern the United States, no human power could have arrested the attempted overthrow of these States."4

  Jefferson Davis moved quickly to get the power of decision out of Governor Pickens's hands and into his own— a feat that took a little doing. On February 23 Davis sent Major W. H. C. Whiting, a West Point graduate and a capable engineer officer, off to Charleston harbor to survey the situation. After Whiting got there, Pickens sent Davis another impatient dispatch: "We would desire to be informed if when thoroughly prepared to take the fort shall we do so, or shall we await your order; and shall we demand surrender, or will that demand be made by you?" Back promptly came a message from the new Confederate War Department: "This Government assumes the control of military operations at Charleston, and will make demand of the fort when fully advised. An officer goes tonight to take charge." In more soothing vein, the message confessed that South Carolina's perhaps excessive ardor, "natural and just as it is admitted to be," would have to yield to "the necessity of the case." When the blow was struck it would have to be successful, since the price of a failure would be disastrous; meanwhile, the officer who was being sent to Charleston to take charge would, on his arrival, muster into the provisional service of the Confederacy the South Carolina troops that were on duty at Charleston.5

  In plain English, Davis was not going to have this job ruined by a set of impatient politicians. He would take over the negotiations regarding the possible surrender of Fort Sumter—official representatives of his government were already on their way to Washington to press the case with

  Lincoln, or with Seward, or with anyone they could talk to—and he would get a competent soldier into Charleston to handle the military end of things. If a war was to begin at Fort Sumter, it at least would not begin just because some local bigwig gave way to blind enthusiasm. South Carolina would lead the parade no longer.

  The implications of all this were clear enough, and bad enough. One way or another, Fort Sumter was going to be taken—if not today, then a little bit later. Washington could give up the fort or fight; the choice that was going to be presented to the new administration would be, simply, to back down or make war. And the choice would be offered, not by a lone state that was going its own way with blind arrogance, but by the South itself. The time for temporizing was just about over.

  Meanwhile, efforts to assuage Governor Pickens continued. Porcher Miles wrote him a long letter, insisting that everyone in Montgomery agreed that the fort ought to be taken at the earliest possible moment and that it was necessary to "restrain the ardor of our troops for a few days only." The sole point that was bothering President Davis, said Miles, was the question: "Are we able with present preparations to take the fort?" On this point, he confessed, "we are all in the dark," but better light would be available very soon, and whenever it could be said that "our batteries can with reasonable certainty reduce Fort Sumter, we will do everything to hasten the attack."

  Other words of caution came from, of all people, William L. Yancey, who found himself for the first time counseling moderation and delay. Yancey confessed that he had hoped South Carolina could take the fort before the Confederate government was organized, but that time had passed. "I can but give you the settled assurance of my mind," Yancey wrote to Pickens, "that if the Fort shall be assaulted without the orders of the Executive of the Confederate States, it will produce a confusion, an excitement, an indignation and astonishment here in the Confed. Congress that will tend to break up the new government."6

  With Yancey himself talking so gently, even Governor Pickens might feel a little restraint. A more important factor, however, undoubtedly lay in the choice Davis made when he sent a military commander to Charleston to take charge of the operations in the name of the Confederate government. He selected a man whose personality and talents would play a large part in the history of the Confederacy—the dapper, self-confident, and gifted Creole, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, recently a captain in the United States Army, now a brigadier general in the provisional army of the Confederate states. Beauregard was just the man to help the Charlestonians digest the idea that a higher authority was taking over.

  Beauregard was in his early forties; small, vigorous, graceful, his graying hair maintained in glossy blackness by judicious application of hair dye, a man who wore exquisitely tailored uniforms with an air, pleasant but unsmiling, with faultless manners. He bore a good professional reputation; had been an engineer officer on Scott's staff in the Mexican War, where he had been twice wounded and had twice won brevets for gallantry, had served for one brief week, in January of 1861, as superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point, resigning that position to follow his state, Louisiana, out of the Union. He had enough social position to impress even the Charlestonians, and he immediately captivated not only Governor Pickens but everyone else in South Carolina. Shortly after his arrival he wrote that he was greatly pleased with the people of Charleston, "who are so much like ours in La. that I see but little difference in them."

  Beauregard reached Charleston on March 3, met with Governor Pickens and a concourse of leading citizens at the governor's headquarters in the Charleston Hotel, and immediately got down to work. He was taken on long tours of the military installations, during which he learned that all of the "high-spirited gentlemen" who accompanied him had made elaborate plans for the reduction of the fort; he listened attentively, and was able to shelve these plans without giving offense to the planners. It did not take him long to discover that there was a great deal to be done.

  Fort Sumter itself, he realized, would be "a perfect Gibraltar" if it were properly garrisoned and armed. The weakness of its garrison was his greatest advantage, and the obvious strategy was to make certain that the garrison remain weak—in other words, to mount guns so that the Federal government would find it impossible to reinforce the place. Tactfully but firmly, he began to rearrange the batteries, concentrating on sealing off the harbor rather than on simply piling up the armaments that would fire on Fort Sumter itself. Along the sandy shores of Morris and Sullivan's islands he built new detached batteries, devised to control the seaward approaches. The defenses at Fort Moultrie were rebuilt, mortar batteries were put where the guns of Fort Sumter could not reach them, and Major Anderson's lookouts could see signs of new activity all around the harbor. Anderson and Beauregard, incidentally, were no strangers. Years ago, when Anderson was an instructor in artillery at West Point, Cadet Beauregard had been one of his students, and had shown such talent that Anderson had had him retained as an assistant instructor.7

  Beauregard was sensitive to points of pride and honor. In effect he was making a complete change in the military installations around the harbor, but he was fully aware that the South Carolina troops he was commanding were not at all like the regular soldiers of the old army. They were, as he saw them, "gallant and sensitive gentlemen" who had left comfortable homes "to endure the privations and exposures of a solider's life" on bleak and comfortless islands where harsh winds from the sea kicked up annoying sand storms. Among the private soldiers were planters and the sons of planters, some of them the wealthiest men in South Carolina, proud as Lucifer, doing pi
ck-and-shovel work in many cases alongside of their own slaves; and they had to be handled with some delicacy. This delicacy Beauregard had, and although he was undoing much that they had worked hard to do, they made no complaints. Instead they quickly made Beauregard their idol.8

  Control of things at Charleston, accordingly, passed into the hands of the Confederate government with a minimum of difficulty, and Jefferson Davis had passed his first acid test. He had at least made it certain that the war would not be begun through sheer irresponsibility. The harebrained plan to start the shooting before Lincoln could take office, on the theory that this would somehow put the Federal government at a crippling disadvantage, had been quietly laid to rest. Thrust so suddenly into a position where he must create a new government against the most profound handicaps, Davis had won at least a little of the time he needed so desperately. He had had, too, his first encounter with a problem that was finally to prove insoluble, even though this first encounter had been successful—the necessity for adjusting the eternal clamor of states' rights to the overriding requirements of the central government.

  Davis was formally inaugurated President on February 18, in an impressive ceremony on a platform built in front of the portico of the state capitol at Montgomery. There was a parade, with a six-horse team of matched grays pulling the presidential carriage, with brightly uniformed militia companies marching, with cannon firing salutes, and with 10,000 people crowding around to see and hear. When the party reached the platform, and Howell Cobb, as President of the Confederate Congress, presented a Bible and administered the oath of office, there was a breathless silence, in which Davis's "So help me God" rang out clearly. An impressionable correspondent for the New York Herald, deeply moved, wrote that "God does not permit evil to be done with such earnest solemnity, such all-pervading trust in His Providence, as was exhibited by the whole people on that day," and an Alabama lady wrote that the slim, erect figure of the new President made her think of General Andrew Jackson, "though he is much more a gentleman in his manners than the old General ever wished to be." The editor of the Montgomery Weekly Advertiser concluded that "if, after this, our enemies at the North shall persist in representing that the seceded states are not in earnest, they will fully entitle themselves to be recorded among those who having ears hear not and having eyes see not."9

  In his inaugural address, Davis struck the note that he was to sound to the end of his days: secession was right, reasonable, legal, a peaceful exercise by the sovereign people of an unassailable liberty, a step taken from necessity rather than by choice. There was no real reason for any conflict between this new nation and the old one from which it had separated, and "if a just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled." Still, it was necessary for the Confederacy to be ready for anything: "If this be denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain to us with firm resolve to appeal to arms and invoke the blessing of Providence on a just cause." It was quite possible, he believed, that some states still in the Union would presently want to join the Confederacy, and the Constitution made full provision for this; but this new nation was permanent, and "a re-union with the States from which we have separated is neither practicable nor desirable."

  For the rest: "It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look around upon a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor and right and liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard, but they cannot long prevent, the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of our Fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which by His blessing they are able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity. With the continuance of His favor ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace and to prosperity."

  There was in all of this no trace of the fire-eater's bugle call, and no faintest hint of any call to the revolutionary barricades. Davis was appealing to the intellect rather than to the emotions. To Mrs. Davis he wrote that beyond the cheers and the smiles displayed by his audience he saw "troubles and thorns innumerable," and he outlined them briefly: "We are without machinery, without means, and threatened by a powerful opposition; but I do not despond, and will not shrink from the task imposed upon me."10 He had made his inaugural address almost plaintive in its repeated assumption that no one who examined the facts could fail to see the complete reasonableness and justice of the Southern position. If the independence of the Confederacy could be talked into reality, these were the words that might do it. Under the circumstances as they were on February 18, 1861, they were probably the only words the new President could have used. There was nothing in them to touch the heart and quicken the pulse. Nothing of that kind was needed, because the Southern pulse was already beating about as fast as it well could.

  Davis's insistence that the new government was permanent and that there would be no reconstruction of the Union was not put in his speech by accident. Amid all of the rejoicings that attended the construction of this new government, there was one haunting fear to disturb the slumbers of devout patriots—the prospect that the whole business might in the end turn out to be what optimists in the North had supposed it was, a political maneuver pure and simple that would end in a reconstruction of the old Union. The Charleston Mercury had been grumbling all winter, complaining that a reconstruction plan lay somewhere underneath everything the Montgomery convention had tried to do. Darkly it mused that in such case the South would have "the same battle to fight all over again," that "we will have run a round circle and end where we started." It was known that some of the slave-state leaders who were still in Washington had reconstruction in mind, and Stephen A. Douglas was actively working for such a development. Privately, he had drafted tentative terms: the independence of the Confederacy would be recognized, but the two governments would be bound together tightly in a commercial union, with common laws governing trade, commerce, navigation, tariffs, patents, and the like, with a president and a council to handle all economic matters and with each nation guaranteeing the defense of the other—a strange, probably impractical, but nevertheless interesting scheme for a dual republic which would tie two separate unions into one greater union. People who were close to Douglas were lobbying in Montgomery; among them the forceful and erratic George Sanders, the Kentucky-born political and financial fixer from New York, who had headed the lusty, expansive "Young America" movement during the 1850s and had had a good deal to do with the famous Ostend Manifesto. Big-bodied, powerful, with blue eyes and an air of disheveled energy, Sanders now seemed to be agitating for a rebuilding of the old Union.11

  The cabinet that President Davis selected did not, in its composition, seem to offer the thick-and-thin secessionists a great deal of encouragement. By and large, it represented the conservative element. Carefully selected to give representation to each of the seceding states, it brought together a group of Southerners who were eminently respectable but not in the least revolutionary-minded. It included only one man who could be listed with the original fire-eaters—Robert Toombs, of Georgia, Secretary of State. Christopher Memminger, of South Carolina, was named Secretary of the Treasury after Robert Barnwell had declined a cabinet post— a thrifty, small-scale lawyer and politician, of whom the Rhetts complained that he had opposed secession up to the last moment. Leroy Pope Walker, of Alabama, was Secretary of War, and Stephen Russell Mallory, of Florida, was Secretary of the Navy. Postmaster General was John H. Reagan, of Texas, and former Senator Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, was Attorney General. Davis remarked afterward that none of these appointees was on close personal terms with him at the time the cabinet was organized; two, indeed, were utter strangers to him, chosen on the recommendation of local political leaders.r />
  One thing was clear: the cabinet did not represent the famous planter aristocracy. Three of its members—Memminger, Mallory, and Benjamin—had been born abroad. All of the cabinet appointees, at one time or another, had been Unionists, and two had opposed secession until their own states seceded. For better or for worse, Davis had not tried the experiment Lincoln was trying, of bringing in the most forceful leaders the nation's politics had to offer; none of these men had either the stature or the desire to take the reins away from the President and direct the government. The executive would be Jefferson Davis and no one else.12

  Excluded from the top posts in the government, and living amid rumors that sooner or later the old Union might be put back together, the fire-eaters felt that they had ground for worry. The frantic effort to set off the guns in Charleston harbor may have represented a desire to put pressure on the Confederate government as well as on the government in Washington. Yet this worry was largely without solid foundation. The fire-eaters' biggest maneuver had been successful: the new government was established and operating before Lincoln took office, and from the moment he took the oath, the Republican President would have to face the hard fact that the Union had actually been broken. Furthermore, although Davis was talking about peace, he was ready to fight and knew that he almost certainly would have to fight, and there was a great deal of iron in him. He had handled his first big problem, that of getting South Carolina under control, with deft speed; he immediately addressed himself to the second, which had to do with the Federal government at Washington.