The Class of 1846

by John Waugh

  Anderson and Dr. Crawford walked the three Confederates back to their boat, and as they were climbing in with the written refusal in their hands, Anderson said offhandedly, “Gentlemen, if you do not batter the fort to pieces about us, we shall be starved out in a few days.”

  Chesnut paused, half-in and half-out of the boat. What was that he said? He wasn’t sure he had heard right. Would Anderson care to repeat it?

  “If you do not batter the fort to pieces about us,” Anderson repeated obligingly, “we shall be starved out in a few days.”7

  Well now, this put an entirely different coloration on the matter. The three aides-de-camp rowed quickly back to Charleston and handed Beauregard the written refusal to evacuate and told him what Anderson had just said. Beauregard immediately wired Montgomery. Then everybody settled in to wait.

  The Confederates manning the guns ringing the harbor had expected the order to open fire at 8:00 P.M. Everybody in Charleston had checked their watches. But eight o’clock came and went and nothing happened. The night wore on toward midnight and there was still no gunfire. The scores of Charlestonians who had lined the Battery all evening to see the show began drifting away to bed.8

  Yet everyone knew they were but a command away from a great, perhaps a tragic, event.

  The answer to Beauregard’s dispatch arrived from Montgomery at about 11:00 in the evening, and Beauregard penned another message to Anderson. The three aides-de-camp, joined this time by ex-Congressman Roger Pryor, got back in the boat and rowed once more for Fort Sumter. At 12:45 in the morning they put in at the wharf and handed Anderson a revised eviction notice. If Anderson would state precisely when he would evacuate, Beauregard wrote this time, he would abstain from battering the place down.

  Anderson stalled as long as he could, meeting at length with his officers, leaving the three emissaries to cool their heels in the guardroom. Finally by 3:15, when they were unwilling to wait any longer, Anderson wrote out his reply. He would evacuate the fort by April 15, three days hence, if—here was the rub—if not ordered otherwise by Washington or if not resupplied before then.

  They had waited around for two and a half hours in the middle of the night to hear Anderson tell them that? At 3:20 Chesnut dictated, as Lee wrote and Chisolm copied, a courteous but terse response, and handed it to the major: The batteries in the harbor will open fire on him in precisely one hour.

  Anderson read the note gravely and answered solemnly: “Gentlemen, I will await your fire.”

  He and Foster, the polite hosts always, escorted them to the wharf. As the Confederates climbed into the boat where Pryor waited—he had not come in—Anderson pressed each of their hands sadly, cordially, and said: “If we never meet in this world again, God grant that we may meet in the next.”9

  Imagine that, the firebrand Louis Wigfall chuckled when he heard about it later, Anderson “giving Chesnut a rendez in the other world.”10

  The little boat cast out on the water, all glassy and calm, and made immediately for old Fort Johnson, 2,400 yards away. They arrived at four o’clock, and were met at the wharf by Captain George S. James, commanding the Johnson batteries. On Beauregard’s authority, the officers in the boat ordered James to fire the signal gun at the designated time.

  James, recognizing the fire-eating Roger Pryor in the boat, said: “Mr. Pryor, I have always been a great admirer of yours, and now offer you the honor of firing the first shot at Fort Sumter.”11

  Pryor drew back in dismay. In a husky voice he said, “I could not fire the first gun of the war.”12

  Pryor welcomed the notion of striking a blow—he had boldly urged it—but his state hadn’t yet seceded. It would be unseemly. That is why he had waited in the boat at Fort Sumter and not gone in with the rest of them.13

  Another officer stepped forward to take up the offer, but James demurred. “No!” he said, “I will fire it myself.”14

  Fifteen minutes later, Beauregard’s boatload of aides-de-camp stopped a moment in the harbor and lay on their oars. As they watched, a 10-inch mortar on Fort Johnson boomed and a shell “sped aloft, describing its peculiar arc of fire and, bursting over Fort Sumter, fell, with crashing noise, in the very center of the parade.”15

  More than a mile away old Edmund Ruffin stood gripping the lanyard of a cannon in the Iron Battery on Morris Island. Ruffin, another Virginian, was as disgusted as Roger Pryor that his state had not yet seceded, and had also come to Charleston to help get things moving. The old man, a noted authority on agriculture and a hotheaded firebrand, had been in the city since November—longer even than Major Anderson. He had started for South Carolina on Election Day, just after going to the polls to vote emphatically for the states’ rights ticket of Breckenridge and Lane. He had been in Charleston ever since, preaching secession and looking forward to the first shot of the holy war. Now that moment had come and there he was, being asked by the boys in the Palmetto Guard to fire the first shot from the Iron Battery. He was bothered by none of Pryor’s compunctions. When he heard the signal shot from Fort Johnson he yanked the lanyard and sent his own cannonball streaking toward Sumter.16

  Inside the fort, Abner Doubleday lay on his cot trying to get some sleep. Anderson had awakened him only half an hour before to inform him they would be fired upon within the hour. The shot from Ruffin’s cannon rumbled in, struck the magazine where Doubleday was lying, penetrated the masonry, and burst near his right ear.17 After that it became harder than ever to sleep. Within fifteen minutes the cannonading from the batteries encircling the harbor was general, the guns pounding away alternately, raining fire down on the unhappy fort. It was the reveille of a lifetime.

  It roused more than just the 128 men and workers at Fort Sumter. It “woke the echoes from every nook and corner of the harbor,” as Stephen Lee put it, “and in this dead hour of night, before dawn, that shot was a sound of alarm that brought every soldier in the harbor to his feet, and every man, woman, and child in the city of Charleston from their beds.”18

  Charleston’s fifty thousand residents, many of them having retired in disgust from the first fruitless vigil only hours before, rushed to the waterfront, to their piazzas and housetops, throwing on clothes as they ran. Hurrahing wildly, they flocked to the Battery, “men without coats, women without crinoline and children in their night gowns.”19

  Mary Chesnut sprang from her bed and fell beside it to her knees. Prostrate, she “prayed as I never prayed before.… The regular roar of cannon—there it was. And who could tell what each volley accomplished of death and destruction.”20

  Mary knew that her colonel husband was out in that dark harbor somewhere in a rowboat. He and his three companions, after watching the first shot arch heavenward toward the fort and explode overhead, had rowed the three miles back to Charleston to report to Beauregard.

  Three miles in the other direction, out to sea, another group of men saw the same arching shot and could do nothing about it. The U.S. Navy’s Gustavus Fox had arrived outside the bar with part of his provisioning expedition at three in the morning. His flagship, the Baltic, had been in a gale the whole way from New York. And when he arrived, Fox had found only the revenue cutter, Harriet Lane, waiting. The plan called for two tugs and three ships of the line, the Pawnee, Powhatan, and Pocahantas, to rendezvous there as well. But they had not yet arrived, and nothing could be done without them; they were the muscle of the expedition. All Fox could do was watch helplessly as the guns in the harbor rained their shot on Sumter.21

  Francis Lejau Parker, a young Confederate gunner on Morris Island, gazed at the exploding ring of fire from the rebel batteries and marveled. “And now shell answers shell,” he wrote, “and batteries from the various points send back to each other their warlike sounds until the whole circle plays on Sumter, lighting up momentarily her guns’ outlines, scarcely visible in the morning light.”

  Through it all stood Sumter, “bold defiant … as quiet as death.” The ball had fairly begun. But as one, two, nearly three hours,
passed the fort still did not answer. Why? The question was on everybody’s lips. Why doesn’t Anderson return this terrible fire? A wave of admiration swept over the men in the batteries as dawn broke and they saw the Union flag still floating defiantly over the fort, heedless of the shot and shell whistling and exploding around it. What is Anderson doing?22

  Anderson was having a leisurely breakfast. It wasn’t much. The cupboard was nearly bare. Fat-pork and water—that’s all that was left to eat. The men formed as usual, under the bomb proofs, and the roll was called as if nothing unusual was happening. Then they went to breakfast too, worried down a little of the fat-pork, and waited for assembly to beat on the drums. As they waited, they stared beyond the casemates at the shot and shell screeching and pounding without. By 7:30 in the morning when the drums beat assembly, they had been under fire for three hours. They were again paraded, and the orders of the day announced.23

  Doubleday, the senior captain, would take the first tour at the guns, assisted by the engineering officer, Lieutenant Snyder, and the doctor, Surgeon Crawford. He would be relieved after the first four hours by Captain Seymour, assisted by Lieutenant Hall. Lieutenant Davis, with Lieutenant Meade, the other engineering officer, would take the third shift. The forty-three loyal workmen, volunteering to help, would carry shot, stitch cartridge bags, and assist the gunners.24

  When all appeared ready, Major Anderson made a final inspection tour. “Be careful of your lives,” he cautioned them all; “make no imprudent exposure of your persons to the enemy’s fire; do your duty coolly, determinedly and cautiously. Indiscretion is not valor; reckless disregard of life is not bravery.” With his brow anxious and his voice breaking, he said: “Manifest your loyalty and zeal by preserving yourselves from injury for the continued service of our cause; and show your love to me by guarding all your powers to aid me through this important duty.”25

  Doubleday’s first shot screeched toward the ironclad battery at Cummings Point. As he watched, it struck the sloping roof, caromed off, and skittered away into the marsh and creek beyond, scattering herons as it went. The feeling of relief in the batteries ringing the fort was palpable. At last Sumter had opened. The sound of a gun not their own had been heard; Major Anderson was not dead or asleep. Soon shot was succeeding shot. The guns of the fort also began answering Moultrie and pounding away at the floating battery.26

  A reporter from the Charleston Courier described it. “The curling, white smoke,” he wrote, “hung above the angry pieces of friend and foe, and the jarring boom rolled at regular intervals upon the anxious ear. The atmosphere was charged with the smell of villainous saltpetre, and, as if in sympathy with the melancholy scene, the sky was covered with heavy clouds and everything wore a sober aspect.”27

  Inside Fort Sumter it was pandemonium.

  An Irish gunner took a breather for a moment behind a column. “Aye!” he exclaimed, “there’s a great crowd o’ them against us, but it’s the Republic they’re fightin’—not us—and, in the name of the Republic, we’re able for them.”28

  Captain Doubleday was disgusted. Through the morning he had watched the shot from his guns bounce off the sloping iron rails of the battery across the way “like peas upon a trencher, utterly failing to make any impression.”29

  He was glad to see Seymour coming to relieve him.

  “Doubleday,” Seymour said with mock sternness, “what in the world is the matter here, and what is all this uproar about?”

  “There is a trifling difference of opinion between us and our neighbors opposite,” Doubleday answered straight-faced, “and we are trying to settle it.”

  “Very well; do you wish me to take a hand?”

  “Yes, I would like to have you go in.”

  “All right. What is your elevation and range?”

  “Five degrees, and twelve hundred yards.”

  “Well, here goes!” Taking up where Doubleday left off, Seymour went to work with a will. But he could also only watch his shot carom off the roof of the iron battery and bound into the marsh beyond.30

  There was not much that could be done about it. The fort could deliver only solid shot and horizontal fire. The only mortars were in the parade and they were unreachable under the heavy Confederate cannonade. Nor were the guns on the barbette tier of any use. They were the most powerful in the fort, but might as well not exist; they were simply too exposed. Not even the traverses Foster had built would protect a man’s life up there.

  Anderson decided early that only the guns in the casemate would be employed. That immediately cut the fort’s firepower by more than half—down to twenty-one guns—and those the least powerful in his repertoire, lacking sufficient caliber to take any serious toll on the enemy batteries. And even those must be husbanded very carefully. As fast as the six needles were flying, there was a painfully finite number of cartridges. Every spare piece of cloth in the fort was being transfigured into cartridge bags. But the six needles couldn’t possibly keep up. At this rate the gunners would soon run out.

  At midday Anderson scaled back his response. He was now firing only six of his guns—two against the batteries on Morris Island, two against Moultrie, and two others aimed at the west end of Sullivan’s Island.31

  As darkness fell, Sumter stopped firing entirely and the Confederates settled into a pace of a shell every ten or fifteen minutes. The night was impenetrable, dark and stormy with lightning and thunder, a rain that fell in torrents, and a wind that howled drearily among the sand hills. To light the darkness the Confederates burned night fires all along the harbor shoreline.

  In Sumter the rain came as a blessing. It, together with the leaking cisterns, banked the fires started during the day. The needles continued to fly until midnight. Every scrap of clothing, extra hospital sheets, any coarse paper that could be found—all of it was falling under the scissors to make cartridge bags for tomorrow.32 Several dozen pairs of Major Anderson’s woolen socks had already been hurled at the Confederates.33

  The reprovisioning fleet, or as much of it as was coming—part of it never arrived—stood helplessly outside the harbor. The Confederates had waited all day with nervous trigger fingers for men-of-war to begin knifing up the main ship channel. They continued to worry it through the night. But there was no movement, and it was difficult to tell who was more offended—the federal garrison or the Confederate gunners.

  The Confederates considered the fleet’s failure to come to the aid of their men at Sumter unchivalrous, not worthy of the courageous stand Anderson was making inside, even though an attack from them now would complicate their own lives. “Miserable cowards,” the Confederates grumbled.34

  The sun the next day, April 13, rose gloriously and chased away everything—the darkness, the gloom, and the lingering clouds. “Everything looks bright and cheerful,” Francis Parker, the Confederate gunner on Morris Island, exulted; “our men are in fine spirits and the firing is steady, continuous and determined. Sumter shows no signs of yielding.” Anderson this morning seemed to be concentrating his fire on Fort Moultrie and the floating battery, which was not floating at all, but fixed hard to the shore. He seemed to be ignoring the Cummings Point and the Morris Island batteries entirely, and this fact didn’t escape the Confederate gunners’ notice.35

  Hot-shot began streaming into Sumter from the rebel batteries, bringing fire with it. Quickly this new shot began to tell on the garrison. By 8:30 the fires had started again in the officers’ quarters and the casemates, and was threatening the magazines. The fort was becoming an inferno of exploding shells, crashing masonry, and acrid smoke. The buildings, riddled and broken, and wet with the rain and the water from the smashed cisterns, now burned with a terrible hissing, sending out dense billowing clouds of vapor and smoke. These soon filled the casemates, making it difficult to breathe. The men now had to stop often and lie on the floor with wet cloths—those that hadn’t been fired away as cartridge bags—covering their faces.36

  Nor were those faces any longer a pre
tty sight. The defenders of Fort Sumter, from Major Anderson on down, were blackened and begrimed by smoke and cinders, and their bodies were exhausted from the unrelieved strain of the bombardment.

  The sight of Sumter afire, however, was a very pretty sight to the Confederates. “Fort Sumter is on fire, hurrah,” exulted Parker; “thousands stand on sand hills, embankments and traverses, the cheering is deafening. It goes on from hill to hill till it reaches the farthest end of the island. Now we have him—but no, there wave the Stars and Stripes towering above the flames and smoke, cries of what a gallant fellow Anderson is, he is all pluck, pluck to the backbone. And now the shot and shell fall like hail on Sumter. Every battery redoubles its fire. Shells burst amongst the flames and shot after shot in quick succession, pound the front walls; brick and mortar fly.”37

  The situation inside Sumter was now desperate. The enemy’s aim had become more exact since yesterday, and with the hot-shot it was now impossible to contain the fires. They had reached the magazines, the stair towers, and the implement rooms on the gorge. Ammunition had to be dumped into the harbor to keep the fort from blowing sky high. Moreover, Sumter’s own firepower was now severely restricted. The stock of cartridges had continued to dwindle despite the night of stitching, and there was no staying ahead. Because of it the guns were down to firing at ten-minute intervals.38

  At about 12:30 the flagstaff, which had been grazed by shot several times, finally took one shot too many. It splintered, broke in half and fell heavily to the parade. Lieutenant Hall leaped out of the sanctuary of the casemate through the fire, smoke, and ruin, flinging obstacles aside, to seize the colors. Everybody surged forward, straining their eyes to see through the smoke. After an agonizing moment, Hall emerged more begrimed than ever with soot, choking and about to faint, his face and hair singed, his clothes scorched, but holding aloft the rescued flag. A heartfelt cheer went up from parched throats Peter Hart snatched the ensign from Hall’s blistered hands as the heroic lieutenant slumped to the floor exhausted, and swiftly fashioned a jury-rigged substitute flagstaff. Within minutes, under Seymour’s supervision, the colors were again flying defiantly over the fort.39