FORT SUMTER

Activity and Determination

MARCH 5

THE MEN AT FORT SUMTER WOULD NOT LEARN THE CONTENTS OF Lincoln’s inaugural address for two days, but they saw visual evidence of a fresh surge of activity at the batteries around Charleston Harbor, which they attributed to both the speech and the contemporaneous arrival of General Beauregard.

On March 4, Sumter’s Captain Foster observed three steamers deliver troops and supplies to the Iron Battery at Cummings Point. A large force was also landed the next night, followed soon after by a shipment of nine new cannon. Portable “hot shot” furnaces were delivered to some batteries, these used to heat cannonballs to the point where they would set fire to whatever flammable materials they struck. The number of new troops apparently exceeded the available shelter at Cummings Point, or so Foster assumed after seeing large numbers of soldiers gathered around their “bivouac fires.” They arrived during a period of fine weather, but this changed abruptly on the night of March 5. Foster was sympathetic. “Their suffering must have been considerable during the night, for the weather suddenly changed from the warm temperature of the preceding days to a high degree of cold for this climate, the wind blowing fresh from the north.”

Despite only being able to watch from afar, Foster thought he detected a change in the tenor of the work at the Carolina batteries: “more earnestness.” Major Anderson noticed it as well. He understood, further, that the batteries were now in very capable hands. He knew Beauregard; he had taught him artillery tactics at West Point. Beauregard in turn rated Anderson his favorite teacher and had worked for him briefly as his assistant. The two men considered each other friends.

Anderson wrote to Adjutant Cooper in Washington, “Everything indicates activity and determination.”

There was a small glimmer of positive news, however. Bits of intelligence and some diligent spyglassing caused Captain Foster to conclude that the much-feared “floating battery” was not so fearsome after all. The barge by itself had a draft of seven feet, which alone would make positioning it close to the fort difficult; but this was before the addition of heavy guns and iron shielding. Even now the barge was clumsy and unwieldy, Foster observed; its tendency to tip forward required the placement of a counterweight at its stern.

Foster reported his assessment to Washington: “I do not think this floating battery will prove very formidable.”

GENERAL BEAUREGARD NEEDED ALL the time he could get to accumulate the guns and powder he would need to repel enemy ships and conduct an effective artillery siege against Sumter, let alone gather and train volunteers. “I am of the opinion that, if Sumter was properly garrisoned and armed, it would be a perfect Gibraltar to anything but constant shelling, night and day, from the four points of the compass,” he wrote to the Confederacy’s new secretary of war, Gen. L. P. Walker. “As it is, the weakness of the garrison constitutes our greatest advantage, and we must, for the present, turn our attention to preventing it from being re-enforced.” If the time came to open fire on Sumter, he told Walker, he wanted to be as ready as possible. “All that I ask is time for completing my batteries and preparing and organizing properly my command, which is still in a more or less confused state, not having yet my general staff officers around me.”

His chief engineer, Major W.H.C. Whiting, felt that given the scarcity of men and equipment, the immediate priority should be to prevent a federal fleet from reaching Sumter in the first place.

The labor problem would soon be resolved, as Charleston’s planters, inflamed by patriotism toward their new nation, volunteered to become regimental officers and, more importantly, donated the labor of their enslaved workers.

But in this crucible of tension, inexperience raised the prospect that an accident could ignite a war.