ANDERSON

Subterfuge

DECEMBER 25–26

MAJOR ANDERSON SET HIS PLAN IN MOTION. HE UNDERSTOOD THAT every step he took would be watched and parsed and would need a plausible explanation. He had long expected that South Carolina forces would attempt to seize Fort Sumter. He now told his officers that he believed such an attack to be imminent and that therefore it would be prudent to remove the wives and children—twenty women, twenty-five children—from the vicinity of Fort Moultrie to a safer area, namely Fort Johnson, the abandoned Revolutionary War–era fort on James Island across the shipping channel. To even the most skeptical observer, the move would seem prudent: If South Carolina seized Sumter, any subsequent armed action would without doubt take place between state forces newly ensconced at Sumter and the U.S. garrison at Moultrie.

Anderson ordered his quartermaster, Lt. Norman J. Hall, to charter three schooners for the purpose. Unaware of Anderson’s actual plan, Quartermaster Hall did so openly. Outwardly, this too made perfect sense and undoubtedly appealed to the Carolinians’ sense of honor and gallantry: How chivalric of the major to send the women and children off to a place of safety before a clash of arms. Sir Walter Scott would be proud. Anderson, however, had no intention of sending the families to Fort Johnson.

Having primed his men to expect an attack at any time, his next move seemed plausible as well: He asked engineer Foster to stop mounting cannon within Fort Sumter, as “they would certainly be turned against us.” Foster, also ignorant of Anderson’s plan, agreed, and went a step further. While he could not remove the guns at Sumter—they were too heavy—he could incapacitate them. He packed up the key components needed to mount and aim the guns and shipped these to Fort Moultrie.

Neither of these steps—the evacuation of families nor the neutering of Sumter’s guns—was likely to cause much alarm to military observers in Charleston; rather, they would further affirm the idea that Anderson did indeed intend to stay at Fort Moultrie. Anderson realized, too, that Foster’s frenzied work on strengthening Moultrie’s defenses would also reinforce that belief. “Both these measures were good blinds,” Anderson explained in a letter to his wife.

On Christmas morning, Foster loaded the artillery components onto a boat and shipped them to Moultrie. When the boat reached Moultrie, however, Major Anderson informed the unsuspecting crew that he had no place to store the materials and ordered the men to keep them aboard for the time being.

A rainstorm forced Anderson to postpone the move to Sumter until the next night, Wednesday, December 26. He directed Quartermaster Hall to remove all of Moultrie’s food supply from its commissary and send it along with the families, but—again for the benefit of hostile observers—to leave a month’s worth at Moultrie. He also ordered his officers to pack up their personal belongings and send them along with the women and children; they were to keep only those items that would fit into a knapsack or small bag. This, too, would make sense to anyone spying on the fort, Anderson reasoned: It suggested that he and his men planned to fight to the last and wanted to be able to grab their belongings at the last second, before blowing up the fort. “In this way,” he told his wife, “I got nearly everything, both public and private, on the three vessels which were to take the women and children to Fort Johnson.”

After the families boarded with all their possessions—including caged canaries—Anderson gave Quartermaster Hall secret instructions. He and the families were to sail to Fort Johnson, but not debark; rather, he was to linger in the bay while ostensibly seeking suitable accommodations ashore. Upon hearing two cannon blasts from Moultrie, however, he was to set sail immediately for Fort Sumter and deliver the families and provisions.

On Wednesday morning, the day after Christmas, Anderson ordered his garrison to pack their knapsacks and bring them to their usual posts at Moultrie. To further allay suspicions of an imminent departure he issued a standing order that the knapsacks should be brought every day as a precaution against the much-expected attack. What he actually planned, however, was to move the men to Sumter that evening.

His big fear was that the boats transporting the men would be discovered by the two Carolina guard steamers in the channel. To minimize the possibility, he planned to move his men at dusk, around five or six o’clock. The patrol vessels typically began their watch a few hours later. One factor heightened the risk, however: The moon that night would be one day away from full, a waxing gibbous, and the sky was clear.

ANDERSON KEPT HIS PLANS so secret that in the afternoon, the wife of Capt. Abner Doubleday, Anderson’s second-in-command, laid out all the makings of an afternoon tea in their quarters within the fort. While Mary Doubleday added the final touches, her husband set off to find Anderson to invite him to take part. “The sun was just setting as I ascended the steps leading to the parapet and approached him,” Doubleday wrote in a later memoir. “He was in the midst of a group of officers, each of whom seemed silent and distrait”—distracted, or preoccupied. Among the officers was the fort’s assistant surgeon, Samuel Crawford.

“It is a fine evening, Crawford,” Doubleday said.

The surgeon barely responded, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“I saw plainly that something unusual had occurred,” Doubleday wrote.

In the next moment, Major Anderson approached Doubleday and told him quietly, “I have determined to evacuate this post immediately, for the purpose of occupying Fort Sumter, I can only allow you twenty minutes to form your company and be in readiness to start.”

Doubleday was surprised but pleased. He had long urged Anderson to transfer the force to Sumter and chafed at the lack of direction from the War Department in Washington. The government’s apparent indifference, he wrote, “made us feel like orphan children of the Republic.”

DOUBLEDAY WALKED TO THE barracks, mustered his men, and conducted a quick inspection. Satisfied that they had their knapsacks, muskets, and sidearms, he ordered them to stand ready.

He left and returned to his quarters, where the planned Christmas tea was quickly forgotten. He directed his wife to prepare to leave immediately. Still maintaining the ruse, he told her “the fighting would probably commence in a few minutes.” She threw her clothing into a trunk; Doubleday summoned two soldiers to carry it to the home of the garrison’s chaplain, Rev. Matthias Harris, in nearby Moultrieville. Once the shooting started, he told her, she was to take cover behind the sand hills. He walked with his wife to the gate, where, he wrote, “we took a sad and hasty leave of each other, for neither knew when or where we would meet again.”

Doubleday strapped on his revolver and tied a blanket across his shoulders, then told Anderson his men were ready. They marched through the gate and proceeded in silence for a quarter mile to where three large rowboats with six oars each were secured behind a cluster of large rocks that had once been part of a seawall.

ANDERSON PLANNED TO TRANSPORT Moultrie’s two companies of soldiers across the channel to Fort Sumter in two movements of three boats each. Once the first contingent arrived at the fortress, the boats were to be sent back to Moultrie for the second group. Two boats were commanded by engineering lieutenants; Major Anderson rode in one of these. Captain Doubleday commanded the third. A small group of men, including Captain Foster, Asst. Surgeon Crawford, and a lieutenant named, improbably, Jefferson C. Davis, was to stay behind to man six of Moultrie’s biggest cannon, now fully loaded, with orders to fire on the patrol steamers if they attempted to intercept the boats. Anderson carried the garrison’s U.S. flag carefully folded under his arm.

The boats shoved off after sunset, with the moon visible above the northeast horizon, moonrise having occurred at 4:04 P.M. They made slow progress. The boats were unwieldy, and some of the men designated as oarsmen proved to have no talent for rowing.

As it happened, one of the patrol steamers was still at its wharf; a second, however, was moving slowly along the channel from west to east, towing a small vessel toward the bar at the ocean end of the channel. The two boats directed by Foster’s engineers, including the one carrying Anderson, steered in a wide circle to avoid the patrol steamer, but Captain Doubleday gauged that the steamer was still far enough away that he could proceed on a direct course straight across the channel to Sumter. “It was after sunset, and the twilight had deepened, so that there was a fair chance for us to escape,” Doubleday wrote.

He was wrong. The steamer was still far off, but the ineptitude of Doubleday’s oarsmen so impeded his boat’s progress that “it soon became evident that we would be overtaken in mid-channel,” Doubleday wrote. He removed his cap and opened his coat to hide its buttons; he ordered his men to remove their caps and coats and to use the coats to cover their muskets, which they had settled along the side of the boat below the oarlocks. “I hoped in this way that we might pass for a party of laborers returning to the fort,” Doubleday wrote.

The patrol steamer was the General Clinch, named for Major Anderson’s father-in-law. When the steamer was about one hundred yards away, its paddle wheels stopped turning.

AT FORT MOULTRIE, CAPTAIN FOSTER and Asst. Surgeon Crawford watched uneasily through a telescope, ready to fire on the patrol steamer. On the beach below, Captain Doubleday’s wife also stood vigil, accompanied by Chaplain Harris, and paced up and down the beach watching and listening for signs of trouble.

To Captain Foster it seemed likely that lookouts aboard the patrol steamer might have eased their vigilance because of the Christmas holiday.

Captain Doubleday was less optimistic: He was certain the men aboard the patrol steamer had spotted his boat and that disaster was sure to follow. The guard ship was known to be armed with cannon, but gunfire wouldn’t even be necessary. The steamer could simply ram the rowboat and leave its passengers to drown.

Tension suffused the boat; the men kept rowing. Otherwise the scene was all serenity—the bay in twilight under a rising moon, the only discernible sound being the knocking of oarlocks. Moments passed. And then, to Doubleday’s surprise and great relief, the paddle wheels of the guard ship again began turning. The steamer continued on its way eastward toward the Charleston Bar and the Atlantic. Doubleday’s men began rowing as fast as their limited maritime skills allowed and soon reached the wharf at Sumter.

Now a new problem arose. As the soldiers disembarked they were met by a throng of workmen from within the fort. A few cheered the new arrivals, most did not. Many wore the blue secession cockade and angrily demanded an explanation for the soldiers’ arrival.

Doubleday ordered his men to form up and “charge bayonet,” meaning to prepare the bayonets on their weapons for an assault. He ordered them to advance; they quickly drove the workers back inside the fort. Doubleday directed his men to occupy the guard rooms, which overlooked the fort’s main entrance, and then posted armed sentries.

Major Anderson’s boat arrived soon afterward, as did the third. The boats were then sent back to Moultrie to pick up the remaining troops. Shortly before eight o’clock, in accord with Anderson’s instructions, the men at Moultrie fired two blank cannon discharges. Asst. Surgeon Crawford fired one of them. These discharges—which had so perplexed Edmund Ruffin—were indeed a signal: They announced that all the boats had safely landed. They also served to instruct Quartermaster Hall, in charge of the vessels carrying the garrison’s women and children, to immediately set a course for Sumter and land the families. In all, Anderson managed to transfer seven officers, seventy-five enlisted men, and forty-five women and children. “The whole movement was successful beyond our most sanguine expectations,” Captain Doubleday wrote, “and we were highly elated.”

But now came disorder and confusion. Soldiers and families entered Sumter’s interior courtyard, the parade, in cold and darkness and found themselves wandering around a surreal landscape of construction debris and death-dealing apparatuses, including fifty-six hundred shells and cannonballs. Man-made lighting was sparse. The gleam from the Fresnel lens in the fort’s lighthouse high overhead did nothing to dispel the darkness below (it would soon be moved to the center of the parade, where it would illuminate the interior grounds). For now the primary source of light was the nearly full moon, which cast a milky glow over the fort, or at least those areas where the light was not obstructed by Sumter’s high walls. Elsewhere shadow prevailed. Into this farrago of rubbish and iron came the families: Mrs. Hammer, wife of Artillery Sergeant William H., with their two children; Mrs. Neilen, wife of Private Patrick, and their three; and twenty other children, including a couple of infants, and their mothers.

Anderson’s officers directed the families to temporary quarters. The big barracks for enlisted men, meant to hold over six hundred soldiers, were not yet finished; the viable quarters within were already occupied by civilian laborers. The soldiers and their families were given rooms in the officers quarters, a three-story brick building that spanned the rear wall of the fort. Household furniture brought over from Moultrie, which had been dumped “pell-mell” on the parade, was now retrieved and placed in designated rooms. “I chose an apartment near the mess hall,” Captain Doubleday wrote, “and made it so comfortable that Anderson and Seymour”—the artist—“came there temporarily to live with me.”

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT NIGHT, Anderson jotted a quick note to his wife in which he thanked God “for His having given me the will, and shown me the way to bring my command to this Fort. I can now breathe freely. The whole force of S. Carolina would not venture to attack us.”

At the moment, he knew, this was anything but accurate. He and his fellow officers, well trained and experienced in warfare, understood that there would be no better time for Carolina forces to attempt to seize the fort. The only way to prevent it, he believed, was to make Sumter as lethal and unassailable as possible, and make sure authorities in Charleston knew it. Right now, however, it was about as impregnable as one of the beachside cottages across the bay.

Anderson also composed a brief message to Adjutant General Cooper in Washington notifying him of the move. “I have the honor to report that I have just completed, by the blessing of God, 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. I left orders to have all the guns at Fort Moultrie spiked, and the carriages of the 32-pounders, which are old, destroyed. I have sent orders to Captain Foster, who remains at Fort Moultrie, to destroy all the ammunition which he cannot send over. The step which I have taken was, in my opinion, necessary to prevent the effusion of blood.”

The colonel would not receive Anderson’s letter until December 29, though by then word of the major’s move had raced around the world.

BACK ON MOULTRIE, CAPTAIN FOSTER and his men faced a busy night. They began moving through the fort and packing up all remaining supplies, ammunition, and personal possessions that the soldiers had been unable to take with them, including musical instruments owned by members of the garrison’s band. They disabled the fort’s guns and set fire to their wooden carriages and cut down the fort’s flagpole.

“You may be assured that I saw the thing well done,” Captain Foster wrote.

On the morning of December 27, with the help of the civilian workmen at Moultrie, Foster loaded his schooners with ammunition and the remaining stores and transported these to Sumter.

THAT MORNING, THE FIRST indication the citizens of Charleston received as to what had occurred the night before was the sight of smoke rising from Fort Moultrie and the absence of its flag. Until then, even residents of nearby Moultrieville, just a quarter mile up the beach, had no idea that the garrison had somehow managed to achieve the thing everyone had feared and that the guard ships were supposed to have prevented.