WASHINGTON

Crisis

JANUARY 1–8

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY, EDMUND RUFFIN LEFT HIS FRIEND’S PLANTATION outside Gainesville, Florida, and resumed his journey to the state capital, Tallahassee, to attend the state’s secession convention. Passing again through the rail nexus at Baldwin, where he had to wait five hours for his next train, he saw numerous telegrams sent from both Charleston and Washington that provided final confirmation of Major Anderson’s move to Fort Sumter, supplemented by reports that some sort of Union effort to resupply the fort might be underway. He welcomed this. “Probably this news, and the beginning of war, with some bloodshed, will serve to determine quicker the position of the Convention,” he wrote. Florida seemed inclined to wait for other states to declare their intentions. But, he wrote, “this is no time to advocate delay.”

He reached Tallahassee on January 3 for the scheduled beginning of the convention only to find that the delegates had voted to postpone the start for two days to give fifteen delayed members time to arrive. That day, January 5, happened to be Ruffin’s sixty-seventh birthday. At a time when the median age of Americans was 19.4 years (compared with 38.3 in 2020) and life expectancy was 39.4 (78.9), this was quite old, but Ruffin seemed quick and energetic. The adjective most often applied to him in press reports was “venerable.”

The convention opened at noon and, after various preliminary actions, approved a motion to allow Ruffin to take a seat in the hall itself among the delegates. He was escorted to the floor by two deputies in an ostentatious manner. “I would have preferred a less ceremonious introduction,” he wrote in his diary, “but I could not avoid it.” His sincerity here is doubtful, for he loved nothing more than being the object of elaborate public attention.

ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, President Buchanan reconvened his cabinet, now to discuss the pressing question of whether to send reinforcements to Major Anderson.

The cabinet called for the South Carolina commissioners’ last letter, the one Buchanan had officially declined to receive, and now had it read aloud. The effect was striking. When read silently as mute text the letter was bitter and aggrieved; read aloud, it was a bellicose rant. “After this letter,” exulted Secretary of State Black, “the cabinet will be unanimous.” Interior Secretary Thompson, true to his secessionist bent (Nicolay and Hay referred to him as “the traitor Thompson”), still argued against reinforcement, but the rest of the cabinet, with its new pro-Union orientation, was in favor.

Buchanan knew that events had forced his hand. “It is now all over,” he said, “and reinforcements must be sent.”

FOR THE WAR DEPARTMENT the question now became how to send the reinforcements. General Scott by this point had begun to rethink the wisdom of sending the Brooklyn to reinforce Fort Sumter. The ship’s draft was so deep that it would only be able to cross the Charleston Bar at certain times; also, pulling so many troops from Fort Monroe in Virginia, the Union’s most important active fortress, would deplete its garrison at a time when its strategic value seemed to grow by the day.

On January 2, the general canceled the Brooklyn mission in favor of a new plan inspired by several civic-minded businessmen from New York who offered to send volunteer troops to Sumter aboard a commercial steamer. The volunteers were rejected, the ship accepted. An Army staff officer headed north to New York City, and on the next evening, Thursday, met with the ship’s agent and its owner to negotiate the cost of chartering and supplying the vessel, a large side-wheeler in regular service to Havana and New Orleans named the Star of the West.

The plan called for utmost secrecy. The ship would depart from New York as if on one of its regular voyages but would pick up two hundred well-armed U.S. Army regulars at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor before heading south. Telegrams were to be avoided for fear of interception, with all telegraphy between Governor’s Island and surrounding cities suspended for the duration of the voyage. Whenever the ship came in sight of another vessel, the soldiers were to go below decks; they would hide there as well when the ship approached Charleston. The plan was kept secret even from Interior Secretary Thompson out of the quite reasonable concern that he would reveal it to his Carolina contacts.

Preparations began at once, and on Saturday, January 5, at five P.M., the Star of the West began its voyage south, pausing to pick up the soldiers. At about nine o’clock it exited New York Harbor at Sandy Hook and entered the Atlantic.

THAT DAY THE WAR Department received a letter from Major Anderson that he had mailed from Fort Sumter nearly a week earlier, on New Year’s Eve. Ordinarily the letter would have taken about two days to make it to Washington; now, for whatever reason—possibly interference by Charleston authorities—it had taken six days. Anderson may have been in a contemplative end-of-year mood when he wrote it, for he expressed quiet satisfaction at having moved to Sumter and bolstering its defenses. “The more I reflect upon the matter,” he wrote, “the stronger are my convictions that I was right in coming here.”

As a consequence, he wrote, he felt no urgency to be reinforced. The government could move troops to the fort “at its leisure.” Soap, candles, and coal were in short supply, Anderson acknowledged, but added, “we can cheerfully put up with the inconvenience of doing without them, for the satisfaction we feel in the knowledge that we can command this harbor as long as our Government wishes to keep it.”

So contrary was the tenor of this letter to the urgency Anderson had conveyed in previous dispatches that Buchanan abruptly canceled the Star of the West relief mission. The War Department sent a telegram to naval authorities in New York ordering them to halt the sailing, but the message arrived too late, and the only means of calling the ship back was to send a faster ship in pursuit.

General Scott again requisitioned the screw sloop Brooklyn. This time he directed its captain to overtake the Star of the West and deliver the cancellation orders directly to the officer in charge of the mission, Lt. Charles R. Woods. Under no circumstances, however, was the Brooklyn to cross the bar into Charleston Harbor.

Another factor influencing the dispatch of the Brooklyn may have been Buchanan’s realization that the secrecy upon which the Star of the West mission so heavily rested had clearly been compromised. In New York, reporters accustomed to monitoring the arrivals and departures of ships had noticed an unusual degree of activity. On Monday, January 7, the New York Tribune reported that the Star of the West had departed amid a fog of mystery. “This steamer cleared on Saturday for Havana and New Orleans. Rumors were rife that she was to convey troops to Charleston, but the story was ridiculed at the office of the owners, and they requested its contradiction.” The Tribune noted, however, that several people associated with the ship “said that she was going to Charleston, and would take on troops in the stream during the night.”

AT FORT SUMTER, MAJOR ANDERSON had no idea that the Star of the West was underway, or that the Brooklyn was speeding along behind it. No message had been sent by telegraph for fear it would be intercepted. The first formal notice to him was sent by regular mail from New York on the day of the Star of the West’s departure in a communiqué that contained a crucial instruction: If the ship was fired upon, the guns of Fort Sumter “may be employed to silence such fire; and you may act in like manner in case a fire is opened upon Fort Sumter itself.” Just how long it would take for the letter to reach Anderson was anyone’s guess.

In the meantime, Anderson had a pleasant surprise. His wife, Eba, feeling she must do something to support him, decided that despite her infirmity she would go to Charleston and try to see him. She recruited the help of a man who had been Anderson’s orderly during the Mexican War, Peter Hart, by now a member of the New York City Police Department. Hart, ever loyal, not only agreed to escort her, but also to join the Sumter garrison, with the idea that Anderson would benefit simply by having him at his side. This suited Hart; he craved a chance to get into the fray. Hart and Eba left New York by train on January 3 and arrived in Charleston three days later. Governor Pickens approved Eba’s visit but balked at first at letting Hart go along. He finally assented on condition that Hart agree to serve only in a civilian role.

Eba’s arrival was a complete surprise to Anderson, who raced to the end of the wharf and exclaimed, “My glorious wife!”

The men found this meeting to be very “affecting,” according to Asst. Surgeon Crawford. No one at the fort had any foreknowledge of the visit, but the garrison was delighted. The visit briefly dispelled the winter gloom and for a time lifted the soldiers’ sense of utter isolation. “Her arrival,” wrote Crawford in his journal, “was most gratifying to us all.”

Eba was so exhausted from travel and her persistent lethargy that she had to be carried up a stairway to reach Anderson’s rooms in the officers quarters. The two had dinner. What else transpired has been lost between the sheets of history. She remained at the fort until four o’clock.

The visit eased Eba’s concerns. “She felt much easier in her mind,” Captain Doubleday wrote, “now that the major had Hart to look after him.”

She began her return journey that evening.

The garrison continued its drive to strengthen the fort’s defenses and mount more guns. On January 5, Asst. Surgeon Crawford wrote to his brother, A.J., to tell him about the measures being taken to repel an attack by Carolina forces, which seemed inevitable.

“My arrangements for the hospital are all made,” he wrote. “My amputating table ready, and the lint, bandages, and instruments all prepared.”