by John Waugh
Foster stared nervously out into the harbor through the gathering dusk where a guard vessel was approaching Doubleday’s boat. The captain was doing double duty again, being an artillery officer this time, standing on the ramparts of Moultrie beside five loaded cannon. With him were a crew of gunners, his brother-in-law and clerk Edward Moall, and Surgeon Samuel Crawford, the post physician. He had orders from Anderson to fire on any vessel that attempted to interfere with the transfer.45 As the guard boat, the General Clinch—named for Major Anderson’s father-in-law—approached, Doubleday ordered his thirty men to take off their coats and cover their muskets. He hurriedly stripped off his own coat and threw it down in the bottom of the boat to conceal his army insignia.
Foster and his little band of gunners watched, held their breaths, and fingered their lanyards as the General Clinch stopped dead in the water near the boat. After a moment, however, it started up again and passed on, persuaded that the boat only carried workmen. The gunners relaxed their grip on the lanyards, and the little boat continued on its way.
Doubleday was the first to arrive at Sumter. At the wharf the workmen, most of them secessionists and some of them armed with pistols, swarmed down to the water’s edge.
“What are these soldiers doing here?” they demanded. “What is the meaning of this?”
Doubleday answered with pointed bayonets, driving the workers back into the center of the fort. After taking over the guardroom commanding the main entrance and placing his sentinels, Doubleday sent the boat back for Seymour and his company. Anderson, who had meanwhile arrived in the other engineer boat, fired a cannon twice and Lieutenant Hall set out immediately from Fort Johnson with his cargo of wives, children, and stores. The entire operation took less than two hours. Everybody was safely within the fort now except the rear guard left at Moultrie under Captain Foster.46
The little garrison at Sumter listened intently for any sign that their move had been discovered. When none came, Anderson began sending boats back and forth to tie up loose ends. One of the loose ends was the soldier’s wife who was in charge of the officer’s mess. So well had Anderson kept his move secret that she, knowing nothing of it, had cooked the evening meal as usual, and was perplexed and a little more than out of sorts when nobody showed up to eat it. When Lieutenant Jefferson C. Davis, who had been left with the rear guard at Moultrie, walked to the mess later, he found her waiting, a good deal hotter by this time than the meal was. He bundled her and her pots and pans and the stone-cold meal into a boat and transferred them all to Sumter.47
When Mary Doubleday fled Fort Moultrie over the sand hills earlier in the afternoon she hurried first to the home of the post sutler, then to the bosom of the family of the post chaplain, Matthias Harris. That evening as she paced the beach with the Reverend Harris and his family, peering anxiously toward Fort Sumter a mile across the water, Major Anderson was composing a wire to Washington. “I have just completed, by the blessing of God,” he said in his own pious way, “the removal to this fort of all of my garrison, except the surgeon, four non-commissioned officers, and seven men. We have one year’s supply of hospital stores and about four months’ supply of provisions for my command.”48
He might as well have reported casually that he had just leveled Charleston and taken no prisoners.
The next morning, having spiked the guns at Moultrie, destroyed the gun carriages facing the harbor, cut down the flagstaff, and sent the last lighter-load of ammunition and supplies to Sumter, Foster rowed to Charleston to close his bank accounts and his engineer office. He was therefore on hand to see the city react to this covert move it had so utterly failed to notice the night before.49
The reaction was hysterical. Charleston thought what the commissioners sent to Washington to negotiate the delivery of the U.S. forts and other property to the new nation of South Carolina thought: that Anderson had as good as waged war on them. “No other words will describe his action,” the commissioners protested in writing to President Buchanan. “It was not a peaceful change from one fort to another; it was a hostile act in the highest sense—one only justified in the presence of a superior enemy, and in imminent peril. He abandoned his position, spiked his guns, burned his gun carriages, made preparations for the destruction of his post, and withdrew, under cover of the night, to a safer position. This was war … and without the slightest provocation.”50
Louisa Seymour was out in her host’s garden in Charleston at about 9:00 on the morning after, picking roses, when the bells in the city began to ring frantically. When she discovered what it meant she couldn’t believe it, and ran down to the steamboat landing to ask if it were true. It was, and word was spreading that Moultrie had been mined and would soon be blown to heaven.51
South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens was outraged. He rushed a note to Anderson demanding that he return his command to Moultrie immediately. Anderson replied that he could not and would not do so, that as commander of the harbor he had a right to move his command anywhere he saw fit.52 Pickens in his frustration seized Castle Pinckney and occupied Fort Moultrie that afternoon.
The news flew to Washington faster even than Anderson’s telegram, and Secretary Floyd was as upset as Governor Pickens. He wired Anderson, demanding to know if it was true. “It is not believed,” the secretary said, “because there is no order for any such movement. Explain the meaning of this report.”53 Floyd had forgotten that the verbal instructions he had sent to Anderson earlier that month had given him permission to move to any fort in the harbor he wished if he felt his command in peril.54
Anderson answered frankly: “It was my solemn duty to move my command from a fort which we could not probably have held longer than forty-eight or sixty hours, to this one, where my power of resistance is increased to a very great degree.”55 Floyd must have wondered if this was the officer with the southern sympathies, the husband of a Georgia girl, that he had sent to Charleston because he thought he could be counted on to do what was right.
Lieutenant Theodore Talbot, one of Anderson’s officers, put it as well as anybody. Anderson’s move, he said, “has cut the Gordian Knot. It is now in the power of the authorities to maintain the supremacy of the Genl. Govt if they choose to do so and it seems to me that they can no longer evade the question.”56 That is probably what upset Floyd so. He didn’t want to maintain that supremacy, but now the pressure was on to do something. Damn that Anderson.
Emotions continued to seethe and churn like a hurricane in the harbor as the two West Point classmates, Foster and Seymour, rowed over the troubled waters to Moultrie together the following Saturday, the twenty-ninth—Foster on private and Seymour on official business. They were met at the fort with the announcement that they were now prisoners and would be taken to Charleston. Foster replied that he weighed two hundred pounds and wouldn’t go unless he was carried. Seymour said he was not quite that heavy, but that he also would resist to the best of his weight and ability. The Carolinians thought about this, probably giving particularly serious consideration to Foster’s impressive bulk, and permitted them to return unarrested to Sumter.57
Later that day Seymour was sent to Charleston on orders from Anderson. Arriving at the landing about 3:00 in the afternoon in civilian dress, he went as soon as he could to look for his wife. He found her suffering for his sins. In the hysterical backlash of the garrison’s overnight move, her hosts had grown so cool and distant that a continued stay seemed impractical. Seymour could linger only long enough to advise her to find a boardinghouse in the city as soon as possible and move there. He had to return to Sumter, and he couldn’t take her with him.58
On his way to the landing he stopped at an apothecary shop to buy chemicals to make fuses for mines and other exploding machines, with which he had successfully experimented at Fort Moultrie. Walking on down Broad Street toward his boat he turned into a newspaper office where telegrams were posted. As he stepped in he found a crowd clustered around an announcement that Secretary Floyd, under the
gun of a financial scandal in Washington, had resigned.
“I’m glad of it,” Seymour said.
The crowd turned to stare at him. “Why?”
“He’s better out of Washington,” said Seymour.
Nobody openly challenged this, so Seymour sauntered on to find another crowd clustered about his boat at the landing and his crew gone. The crowd explained that the soldiers had been taken to the city guardhouse. This meant Seymour had to make another trip to see his old neighbor, the mayor of the city, whom he found in his office. Seymour stated his case and the mayor, as genial as ever, ordered the crew released and escorted back to the boat. As they pushed off for Sumter without further interference, Seymour could have mused how much easier it was to get men out of Charleston than ammunition. But that might not long be the case, given the present mood in the city.59
If the garrison’s odyssey was over, Louisa Seymour’s ordeal and that of the other officers’ wives were just beginning. Mary Doubleday had been the only one of them still at Moultrie when the peremptory transfer began. Louisa had been packed off to Charleston earlier in the day. Mary Foster and her sister, each with a young daughter, had also gone to Charleston. The wives of the soldiers, who had a different status, were already with their men at Sumter. Left behind in the move, the officers’ wives wanted to be there too.
Mary Foster and Mary Doubleday got there the easy way. Mrs. Foster and her sister managed after some time to wrangle a permit to visit the fort from Governor Pickens. Mrs. Doubleday on January 3 discovered a boatload of workmen going to Sumter, took a seat in the stern, and told them she was going with them.
Louisa Seymour’s arrival at Fort Sumter was in the black of night and a bit more complicated.
On January 4, after half a morning of negotiating for a room, she had returned to Sullivan’s Island. There she appealed to the South Carolina general in command at Fort Moultrie for permission to visit Sumter, and was turned down. She then appealed to the post sutler, Dan Sinclair. Sinclair had three boys, one of whom was present, and who when asked to take her to Sumter said he would not dare do so. But later that evening after dark as Louisa sat dejectedly in front of the fire in Chaplain Harris’s living room, Sinclair tapped at the window and called her out. He and his two other boys were there to row her across.
It was only a small boat, but the night was still and the water perfectly placid. Coming up to the wharf in the rear of the fort, the boat was hailed by the sentinel on duty, who fired his musket. Sinclair shouted that the captain’s wife was aboard.
Inside the fort, Louisa found the wives of Doubleday and Foster already there. The next question, now that they were there, was what to do with them. Louisa Seymour begged Anderson to let them stay, saying she would make herself useful in any way she could. But Anderson decided it was impractical; the officers’ wives had to leave. Reluctantly they embarked for Charleston, Louisa Seymour and Mary Doubleday returning in the small rowboat that night with Sinclair and his two boys.60
Two days later, to everybody’s surprise, particularly Major Anderson’s, his own wife appeared at the wharf with reinforcements. Eba Anderson was not well—indeed, she was an invalid—and the major had left her in New York when he had come to Charleston in November. When she read in the papers that her husband was now caged at Fort Sumter, she vowed that he should not be there without Peter Hart. Hart, an Irishman, had been Anderson’s orderly sergeant in Mexico and was devoted to him. She would find this faithful and resourceful man wherever he was and get him to her husband’s side even if it killed her. After a long and hurried search she found Hart on the New York City police force, and called him to her.
When he came and brought his wife, Mrs. Anderson said, “I have sent for you to ask you to do me a favor.”
“Anything Mrs. Anderson wishes, I will do.” Hart replied.
“But it may be more than you imagine.”
“Anything Mrs. Anderson wishes.”
“I want you to go with me to Fort Sumter.”
Hart looked for a fleeting moment at Mrs. Hart.
“I will go, Madame.”
“But, Hart, I want you to stay with the major,” Mrs. Anderson said. “You will leave your family, and give up a good situation.”
Hart again looked inquiringly at his wife, and seeing there what he sought, said: “I will go, Madame.”
“But Margaret,” Mrs. Anderson said, turning now to Hart’s wife, “what do you say?”
“Indade, Ma’am,” Margaret said, “and it’s Margaret’s sorry she can’t do as much for you as Pater can.”
Twenty-four hours later, against the advice of her doctors, Eba Anderson was on the cars with Hart headed for Charleston. There they wrung permission to visit Sumter from Governor Pickens and when they put in at the wharf and her arrival was announced, Anderson rushed out exclaiming, “My glorious wife!”
“I have brought you Peter Hart,” she replied cryptically. “The children are well; I return to-night.”61
The other officers’ wives left Charleston about the same time, in a body on January 8 on the midnight train. They hated to leave their husbands in these straits, but they could no longer endure the hostile atmosphere in the angry city. Like Eba Anderson, they would have to do what they could from New York.
Waiting
for the
Ball to Begin
A little after dawn on the day after his wife left for New York, Abner Doubleday mounted the parapets at Fort Sumter and frowned unhappily out into the harbor.
He was depressed. The fort itself was bleak—a dark, gloomy, unfinished hollow of an amphitheater encased in high walls that only grudgingly let in the sun. And when he ascended to the parapet he saw everywhere the accursed South Carolina flags, representing palmettos, pelicans, and other strange devices, and hanging from flagstaffs about the harbor where Old Glory used to fly. It was an affront to this steadfast New York unionist.
For God’s sake where was his country? Not an echo had come back from the loyal North to hearten and encourage the tiny garrison since its dramatic move from Moultrie two weeks before—only the outraged telegram from Floyd and all this grief from the South Carolina secessionists. He couldn’t count the times his glasses had swept the horizon in vain for a sign of the one flag he longed to see.
This morning he looked again, out to the open sea. This time there was something. A ship passing the bar, moving swiftly. Could this be the answer from the North? But that was impossible; this was no man-of-war steaming boldly in. It was only a merchant ship, a sidewheeler churning up the channel.
But as it steamed on, a cannon shot skittered across the water—a salvo from the new masked battery on Morris Island at the harbor entrance.1
So here it was at last, the impatiently awaited echo from the North. The Buchanan administration, now minus Floyd, who had been superseded by Postmaster General Joseph Holt, was sending reinforcements. To avoid something—suspicion, war, chaos, embarrassment?—help was coming down the channel in the guise of a lowly unarmed merchant ship.
Inside the sidewheeler, called the Star of the West, 250 armed soldiers waited tensely. The first shot from the Morris Island battery came as a complete surprise to Captain John McGowan on the bridge of his ship. There wasn’t supposed to be a battery there, not that close to the harbor entrance. But it was undeniably a shot ricocheting over the water from that direction, plunging and skipping along and falling short. It was, of course, an invitation to stop, but the captain was disinclined to accept it. Instead, he defiantly ran up a garrison-size national ensign, which was answered by another shot from the masked battery—this one bounding over the vessel at head level, between the smokestack and the walking-beam of the engine.
“Booh!” McGowan shouted. “You must give us bigger guns than that, boys, or you can not hurt us!”
The next shot ripped into the ship just abaft the forerigging and stove in the planking. Another followed that the captain saw come “within an ace” of carrying away the rud
der. Now a steamer with a cutter in tow was speeding toward them from Charleston. The man on the Star of the West wondered why the guns on Fort Sumter didn’t answer those infernal batteries.2
At Fort Moultrie farther up the channel, H. M. Clarkson, a newly promoted corporal in the service of South Carolina, nervously sighted down the barrel of Gun No. 13, a ten-inch columbiad lovingly called “Edith.” He peered toward the merchant ship drawing now within range. Clarkson’s battery commander, Major R. S. Ripley, standing on the parapet with his glass glued to the vessel, barked an order: “Gunner No. 13, prepare to fire.”
A short pause followed, then Ripley shouted, “Fire!”
In a burst of smoke and a boom like thunder, Edith hurled her 128-pound ball across the bow of the Star of the West. The shattering boom shook the masonry where Edith crouched, but it shook Captain McGowan even more.3
“Helm out of port!” he screamed to his helmsman, and the Star of the West churned about in the water and steamed back down the channel toward the mouth of the harbor.4
With the first shot from the masked battery, Captain Doubleday sprinted below to wake Major Anderson, who ordered him to beat the long roll and post the men immediately at the newly emplaced barbette guns. By the time the two reached the parapet, Edith and the guns on Morris Island were all barking at the vessel.5 Anderson took in the scene and hesitated. This called for a conference. He and several of his officers repaired to the laundry room.