FORT SUMTER

Forbearance

JANUARY 9–12

AS MAJOR ANDERSON AND HIS MEN WATCHED FROM THE SUMTER parapet, the Star of the West, under fire from Fort Moultrie, made a long sweeping turn and headed back toward the Atlantic. Sumter’s cannon were loaded and manned; gunners stood ready, grasping the lanyards that would fire the guns.

“Hold on; do not fire,” Anderson commanded. “I will wait. Let the men go to their quarters, leaving two at each gun—I wish to see the officers at my quarters.”

This infuriated Captain Doubleday, who saw the attack on the ship as an outrage against the American flag. Sumter’s inaction must have “astonished” the Southern men at Fort Moultrie, he wrote in a later recollection; Anderson should have fired back. By doing so “we could have kept down the fire there long enough to enable the steamer to come in. It was plainly our duty to do all that we could.” The ship might already have been badly hit and about to sink, he wrote. “Had she gone down before our eyes, without any effort on our part to aid her, Anderson would have incurred a fearful responsibility by his inaction.”

The officers gathered in Anderson’s quarters. The major told them he was considering using the fort’s guns to close the harbor. He polled the officers for their views. His adjutant and quartermaster, Lt. Norman Hall, agreed with the plan, as did Captain Doubleday, who urged immediate bombardment. Others counseled delay, Lieutenant Meade of the engineers in particular. Meade, a Virginian, had often expressed sympathy for the South. He argued now that the garrison was under orders to act only in defense; he repeated his conviction that firing would lead to civil war.

Anderson decided not to fire and not to close the harbor. He resolved instead to send a protest to Governor Pickens and to delay any drastic action until he received a response. He composed a note, which his officers approved; he then ordered Quartermaster Hall to bring it personally to the governor under a flag of truce.

Hall arrived at Charleston in full uniform. His welcome was decidedly chilly. A rumor had circulated that his mission was in fact to put the city on notice that it was about to be shelled by the guns of Fort Sumter. A crowd followed him to the governor’s temporary office in Charleston’s city hall, where the lieutenant presented Anderson’s letter of protest.

“Two of your batteries fired this morning upon an unarmed vessel bearing the flag of my Government,” it began. “As I have not been notified that war has been declared by South Carolina against the Government of the United States, I cannot but think that this hostile act was committed without your sanction or authority.”

For that reason alone, Anderson wrote, Sumter’s guns did not return fire. “I have the honor, therefore, respectfully to ask whether the above mentioned act—one, I believe, without a parallel in the history of our country or of any other civilized government—was committed in obedience to your instructions, and to notify you, if it be not disclaimed, that I must regard it as an act of war, and that I shall not, after a reasonable time for the return of my messenger, permit any vessels to pass within range of the guns of my fort.”

Pickens replied with a single, very long paragraph that reminded Anderson “that the political connection heretofore existing between the State of South Carolina and the States which were known as the United States had ceased,” and that the state was within its rights to fire on the Star of the West. “The act,” he told Anderson, “is perfectly justified by me.”

Anderson still did not fire. His orders, after all, were to act strictly in a defensive manner. And for the moment, at least, he and his men did not seem to face imminent attack. Instead of following through on his promise to take control of the harbor, he again gathered his officers in his quarters and told them he had decided to send a man north for direct consultation with the War Department as to how to proceed. He designated Lt. Theodore Talbot, an officer perpetually on the fort’s sick list owing to a chronic lung ailment. Anderson immediately sent him to Governor Pickens with a request that he be allowed to travel through the state unmolested. Pickens assented. One of Pickens’s aides accompanied Talbot back to the wharf so that the lieutenant could retrieve his baggage without interference by a crowd of some eighty people who had gathered at his boat. Prudently, Talbot wore street clothes. The carriage took him to the train station.

Pickens also allowed another officer, Asst. Surgeon Crawford, to pick up mail that the governor previously had prohibited from being delivered to the fort. Pickens gave no explanation for his change of heart, but Crawford attributed the “marked courtesy” shown by the governor during this meeting to his relief at Anderson’s decision not to open fire and to put the whole matter in the hands of his superiors in Washington.

THIS MOMENT OF CONCILIATION PASSED. Two days later, on Friday, January 11, just after noon, a small steamer named Antelope bearing a white flag approached the fort. Someone aboard shouted, “Message from the Governor.”

Anderson dispatched a boat to meet the steamer, which then returned with two men, South Carolina Secretary of State Andrew G. Magrath, and the state’s secretary of war, David F. Jamison. Magrath was the former federal judge who had resigned after Lincoln’s election; Jamison had been president of the state’s secession convention. Anderson greeted them at the wharf, then showed them to a nearby chamber ordinarily occupied by the officer of the guard. The two men presented the major with a brief note from Pickens requesting, in the politest of terms, that he surrender the fort.

After a lengthy conversation, Anderson once again gathered his officers and put the question to them: “Shall we accede to the demand of the Governor, or shall we not?”

The answer was a unanimous no.

Anderson returned to the guard room and told the Carolinians that he could not comply with their request; it was not his decision to make. He urged that they try to resolve the conflict through diplomacy and vowed, “I will do anything that is possible and honorable to do to prevent an appeal to arms.”

Which was followed by what Crawford called “an impressive silence.”

ANDERSON PREPARED A LETTER for the two Carolina officials to bring to Governor Pickens in which he reiterated his inability to comply with the governor’s surrender demand. But now he proposed sending still another man to Washington to deal specifically with the question of surrender. He further suggested that this messenger be accompanied by a South Carolina representative so that both could make their case directly to President Buchanan and the War Department.

Pickens liked the idea. Anderson chose for this ambassador his personal aide and quartermaster, Lieutenant Hall; Pickens selected the state’s attorney general, Isaac W. Hayne, who was instructed to inform Buchanan that if he attempted to reinforce Sumter with troops, South Carolina would regard it as a “declaration of war” against the state. Hayne was directed, further, to demand the withdrawal of Anderson and his men and the surrender of the fort.

The two reached Washington on the evening of Saturday, January 12.

To Captain Doubleday back at Sumter, this approach seemed foolhardy—“a fatal measure.” He advocated prompt action to close the harbor. Delay, he argued, gave the state “an immense advantage.” While negotiations were underway, the United States would be honor bound not to send a naval force to secure Sumter; meanwhile, South Carolina could continue building its batteries and acquiring supplies of shot and shell, thereby increasing its ability to repel any such force. The state could install guns and stockpile provisions, while the garrison at Sumter struggled even to find firewood.