Christmas in April
March–April 1861: Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina
Paul A. Thomsen
For a collection of rebel states, in early 1861, the new Confederate States of America seemed to be sitting on top of the world. While the northern states were consumed by partisan bickering over how best to wield Federal power to carve up the west, southerners were united in their opposition to the supremacy of Federal governance. They acted with eminent decorum in withdrawing from the Union. They were even prepared to defend themselves. War was neither inevitable nor required. In fact, were it not for their byzantine system of leadership, their awkward negotiating policies, and a few overzealous Rebels in South Carolina, the Confederacy might well have changed the entire landscape of the Civil War. Instead, in April 1861, elements within the Confederacy chose to throw caution to the wind. They assumed an aggressive military posture and fired on a tiny Union fort. In that one act, the South lost the sympathy of many potential northern and western allies in favor of starting a shooting war against a militarily superior and, now, united foe.
The delicate relationship between the urban (industrialized) North and the largely agrarian (slave-based) South had shaped much of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history. While northern businesses grew rich from Federal-sponsored infrastructural improvements, the rural South, suffering heavy taxes, gained little. When southern farmers expanded westward in search of prosperity, the North agitated against the increasing influence of the slave power in the U.S. Congress. The quarreling escalated from cold silence to pushing, shoving, and the threatened shattering of the American union over slavery and the newly acquired western territories in the 1860 national election. When they received word of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 victory, the southern states felt they had no choice but to secede from the Union.
Instantly, the move divided the North. Many northern businesses were reliant on southern cotton. Proslavery settlers in western states started causing political and criminal trouble for regional Republicans. States’ rightists argued the government was growing too fast and encroaching too deeply on the rights of individuals. Republicans, who saw the South as a backward region caught in a bygone era, even threatened the fragmentation of their own party over how to punish the rebel South.
In March 1861, Abraham Lincoln attempted to quell national disunity and entreated the already seceded southern states to return to the national table:
“Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution. . . . But such is not our case. . . .
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Rather than stanch the bleeding wound, Lincoln’s speech fell on deaf ears. Republicans in Congress questioned the president’s apparent softness. American military officers responded by pledging their loyalty to the South. Similarly, members of Lincoln’s own cabinet, William Seward and Salmon Chase, attempted to convince the newly elected president that he was not capable of leading the nation in this time of crisis. Yet all was not lost. Although Lincoln quickly realized that only time would cool southern tempers, the president was able to buy some time for his party by cunningly manipulating his cabinet members and his own party. Still, if the South didn’t soon make a mistake to change the game, Lincoln feared the Union might very well implode.
Initially, the South remained steadfast and wise, but over time, vulnerabilities began to surface in the secessionist game plan. Jefferson Davis, both a reluctant secessionist and an initial refuser of the Confederate presidency, attempted to ease northern feelings by attempting to foster a rapprochement with the North. As his first presidential act, Davis formulated a peace delegation to craft a peaceful conclusion to crisis. These motions of amelioration, however, amounted to little after the Federal government refused to legitimize the Rebel government by engaging in direct intercourse. In response, Davis accepted the rerouting of negotiations through the southern state governors. Yet this new diplomatic method was time-consuming and invited a number of additional (and largely undesirable) voices to join the negotiations, including the governor of South Carolina, Francis Pickens, and Confederate Army General P.G.T. Beauregard, who were working to evict the Union from the port city of Charleston. Still, as long as all orders came from the southern president and both parties remained patient, Davis felt certain a peaceful separation from the North could be achieved.
Sadly, Davis overlooked the other forces at work. By April 1861, thousands of southern militiamen were laying siege to Federal military bases throughout the South. Not wishing to be responsible for starting a war and unable to resupply, the Union fort commanders of landlocked installations surrendered their base to the Rebels when their provisions were depleted. In response, the soldiers were largely treated generously by the southerners, who allowed the forces now perceived as alien to leave these fortifications and their southern land in peace. The coastal and island military bases, however, were another matter. With access to the sea, many were ordered to stay their ground, buy stores from the locals, and, if necessary, await reprovisioning by sea. If, however, the security of their position was deemed untenable, the base commanders were allowed to relocate to available nearby island installations. As a result, the North and South continued to stare each other down, each hoping the other’s cooler head would see reason.
For the first few months, the climate indeed seemed cordial between the two parties, but before long, Confederate patience wore thin. Governor Pickens of South Carolina, for example, communicated to the Confederate government that the Federal forces inside an old Charleston Harbor American Revolutionary fortification, Fort Moultrie, were a threat to his state’s security. Thinking an overt threat of force might shake the North’s confidence, the Confederacy took a more aggressive posture. First, they authorized Pickens to move his southern forces to secure the harbor. Next, they rapidly dispatched a military strategist and Mexican War army engineer, Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, to oversee the crisis, applying a level of officialdom to the pressure applied to the fortification.
Major Robert Anderson, watching the numbers of southern militia grow larger than his men could handle, was forced to transfer his command from Fort Moultrie to a tiny island outpost near the mouth of the harbor—Fort Sumter.
The southern forces, watching the retreat, rejoiced.
For the first time, an overt threat of force had given the Confederacy a tactical success, but the limited military achievement also led to a series of even greater mistakes. With their immediate goals now achieved, the Confederate leaders thought their regional managers would sit in peace as negotiations continued. They were mistaken. The regional players thought a little more might shake the divided North from their precarious perch. They were wrong again. They also thought military force would send the Lincoln administration running like the yellow-bellied bullies many in the South were now imagining them to be. They were wrong about that, too. Besides, if it came to open war, the Union, they thought, would grow tired within a few weeks and leave the South alone. Oh boy, were they ever wrong about that one!
In light of these new developments, the Confederacy gave Beauregard theater discretion “to act as if he were in the presence of a hostile force with whom at any moment he might be in conflict.” Instead of crafting a state of defensive preparedness, Beauregard and his men methodically forged a crucible. There would be only one acceptable conclusion: the Confederate occupation of Fort Sumter. Mail to the fort was stopped and any attempt to safely resupply the fort by land or sea was neutralized. As a result, Beauregard, South Carolina, and the Confederacy assured a Confederate tactical victory within a matter of days and certain long-term doom for their cause.
By using force unnecessarily, the South subverted its reasoned arguments on state sovereignty with renewed unilateral demands and aggressive action. Few northerners were willing to go to war over slavery. Similarly, a state’s legal rights were a concern with which most states could sympathize. Yet acts of aggression, threats, and violence perpetrated against Union soldiers crossed a line. In light of Fort Sumter, the southern actions were viewed by Republicans as desperate acts of imbalanced and evil people that needed to be forcibly put down. Moreover, instead of compassion, the now coalescing North was gaining a taste for blood. If the Rebels allowed the Union to keep the island, they would be perceived as impotent, the southern populace would likely fragment, and the philosophical issues behind the current crisis might forever remain unresolved. As a result, whether impotent or arrogant, the Confederacy would now look like fools.
On April 10, 1861, the Confederates authorized the South Carolina commander to remove the Union from Fort Sumter. In response, Beauregard both ordered his men to gather additional supplies of gunpowder and sent a delegation to ask Anderson to surrender.
Anderson refused.
On the following night, Beauregard sent one last ultimatum to Anderson.
Anderson refused an unconditional surrender, but conceded he would surrender on certain terms. Instead of accepting the terms, this time Beauregard’s adjutants boldly refused to compromise, rebuked the surrender, and rowed away.
At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, Edmund Ruffin, a Virginia farmer, agrarian expert, publisher, and ardent secessionist, fired the first shot in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. For the next thirty-four hours, Confederate fire rained down on the tiny island from three sides.
When the Union fort surrendered on April 14, the South had achieved its victory. Beauregard promptly took control of South Carolina’s long-sought prize, but in seizing the island, he had lost the Confederacy. Diplomacy was now irrelevant. Gone were the possibilities of a peaceful settlement, a separate peace, and/or a reunification with the North. Moreover, where the North had boundless war-making capabilities in both men and supplies, Confederate leaders, hampered by the region’s lack of industrial capabilities, now no longer had the luxury of time to stockpile goods and prepare for war. Finally, in taking an offensive posture over a largely insignificant fortification, Beauregard’s act in Charleston Harbor had now injected a sense of bloody entitlement into a high-minded debate which flew in the face of the distracted North.
As the South should have anticipated, the battle for Fort Sumter rapidly replaced the secessionist crisis in northern minds. The unprovoked attack on the Federal installation, indeed, brought clarity to the Union. First, the debate within Lincoln’s cabinet was replaced by war planning. Second, the once disparate factions of the Republican Party rallied behind the president’s standard as fellow protectors of the Union and prosecutors of the war against the Rebels. Third, those living in the North who sympathized with the South became less open in their opinions for fear of being labeled unpatriotic or, worse, charged as a traitor. Finally, although Lincoln’s move to call for troops would previously have been considered political suicide, the president’s rally cry for action in the wake of Fort Sumter was met with a swarm of eager political supporters and a stream of volunteers with which he could defend the capital.
Prior to April 12, 1861, few would have challenged the prediction that the South might win their way through the crisis, but by losing their patience and acting the bully in their aggression against the Federals at Charleston Harbor, the secessionists had actually given Abraham Lincoln Christmas in April.