Marcus Morton Sends Fort Sumter’s Maj. Robert Anderson a Message of Support in His “Hour of Imminent Peril”

South Carolina was the first to go. Mississippi was next. And then Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Enraged by the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who vowed he would not allow slavery in new territories joining the United States, the seven Southern states seceded from the Onion and elected their own president, the former U.S. secretary of war and senator from Mississippi Jefferson Davis, before Lincoln even took the oath of office. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists,” the president stated in his March 4, 1861, inaugural address. But Lincoln also declared he would use the “power confided in [him] to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government.” This included Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, which, surrounded by thousands of Confederate militiamen and artillery batteries, was rapidly running out of provisions. For weeks Maj. Robert Anderson and his modest garrison received no supplies or reinforcements, but they remained in the fort despite mounting pressures and threats to evacuate. As word of Anderson’s plight spread through the Union, heartfelt letters of admiration poured into the fort, including one from Marcus Morton, the former governor of Massachusetts.

Taunton Mass April 8 1861

Major Robert Anderson USA Commanding Fort Sumter Charleston S. C.

Sir,

At a moment when the hearts of all true friends of the Union were heavy with apprehension; when distrust in the efficiency of Republican Institutions seemed about to settle upon the land; and men began to doubt, whether the coming day would dawn on a people enjoying the blessings of Constitutional Liberty or a people drifting into disorder and anarchy, the intelligence of your self-reliant, wise and patriotic conduct in the harbor of Charleston, as it flashed from point to point, reanimated their wavering hopes, restored their waning confidence, and gave assurance that they still possess a national Government.

This is not the time nor the occasion to enter upon any discussion of the merits of the unhappy controversy which menaces the Republic; nor to enquire upon whom rests the responsibility for the perils which environ us. Your heroic action admonishes us that our first thoughts and efforts should be devoted to the maintenance of the Union as it was founded by our wise and patriotic Fathers and bequeathed to us, that we, in our time, may transmit it, in all its integrity and glory, to our successors. We trust that this may be accomplished by an exercise of the same disinterested spirit by which they were animated, and by the same rational means which they employed.

We trust that reason and reflection may carry to the minds of our Fellow Countrymen, in every section of our widely extended and diversified territory, the conviction that there can be no grievance, which may not be better and more certainly redressed, in the Union, than out of it; and that the sum of all existing evils, real or supposed, is but the dust of the balance when weighed against a single one of the dreadful consequences, which must inevitably follow in the track of dissolution.

We trust that God, in infinite Goodness, may avert the horrors of fraternal strife; and that under His providence, the Flag, which, heretofore, has floated in glory over land and sea, the hope of the world, may never be stained by fraternal blood. But come what may come, we but utter, what we believe to be the honest sentiment of the Country, when we repeat and adopt, the memorable words, which, in a similar crisis, gave hope and confidence to the nation.

“Our federal Union—It must be preserved.”

Entertaining these sentiments, and recognizing in you a man and a soldier, who in the hour of imminent peril, had the forethought to conceive, and the patriotism and courage to perform an Act necessary to the preservation of the authority and entirety of the Union, even at the risk of self-sacrifice, the citizens of the Ancient Town of Taunton, desire to present to you an expression of their admiration and gratitude, and as a testimonial of their appreciation of your character and of the eminent services rendered the Republic, the undersigned, by their authority and in their name and behalf, begs your acceptance of the accompanying Sword. confident, that, by your hand, it never will be drawn without just cause, or returned, dishonored, to its scabbard.

In behalf of the inhabitants of Taunton, With high personal considerations I am Your Obedient Servant,

Marcus Morton

Just after 3:00 A.M. on April 12 Major Anderson received a polite but unwelcome message from two Confederate officers: “By authority of Brig General Beauregard Commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his Batteries on Fort Sumter in an hour from this time. We have the honor to be Very Respectfully Yr. Obt Svts.” Anderson refused the ultimatum, and at 4:30 A.M., the Confederate forces began their assault. Anderson and his sixty-eight soldiers were bombarded by an estimated 4,000 shells for a day and a half before they finally surrendered. (Miraculously, no one was killed in the onslaught.) Cheers erupted throughout the Confederacy as the “American” flag above Fort Sumter came down. “We have humbled the proud flag of the Stars and Stripes,” boasted the governor of South Carolina, “that never before was lowered to any nation on earth.” Pierre G. T. Beauregard, who directed the attack, had learned his artillery skills over twenty years earlier while a cadet at West Point. His instructor was Robert Anderson.