WASHINGTON

The Commissioners

MARCH 15–21

ON FRIDAY, MARCH 15, TWO SINGULARLY AUGUST MEN PAID A CALL on Secretary of State Seward on behalf of the Confederate commissioners. These were Samuel Nelson of New York and John A. Campbell of Alabama, both associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, both committed to finding a peaceful resolution to the national crisis. They believed the best way to avoid war was for Seward to offer the commissioners a formal interview to allow them to state their case and to assure them that the administration wanted peace.

“I wish I could do it,” Seward told the justices. But no, he said, “there is not a member of the Cabinet who would consent to it.”

Next Seward displayed the cunning that had made him such a resilient politician. Intent on cooling inflamed passions on both sides, he told the justices, “If Jefferson Davis had known the state of things here he would not have sent those commissioners; the evacuation of Sumter is as much as the administration can bear.”

That one word, “evacuation,” dropped so casually by Seward, caught Campbell by surprise.

“I had not before this had a hint of the proposed evacuation of Sumter,” Campbell wrote later. It changed everything. Campbell felt this was something the commissioners needed to know, and asked Seward’s permission to tell them. Seward not only assented but told Campbell that he could also tell them the evacuation would happen within five days. Moreover, Seward said, Campbell could assure the commissioners that there also would be no effort to change the military status of Fort Pickens, the U.S. sea fortress in the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola, Florida.

Seward omitted the fact that these were guarantees he had not been authorized to make.

Campbell immediately took this news to commissioner Martin Crawford and urged him to hold off on trying to get an official response to his demand for a meeting with Lincoln. Crawford was skeptical. He insisted that Justice Campbell put in writing all that he had just relayed, and Campbell did so.

“I feel perfect confidence in the fact that Fort Sumter will be evacuated in the next five days,” Campbell wrote, “and that this is felt to be a measure imposing vast responsibility upon the Administration.

“I feel perfect confidence that no measure changing the existing status of things prejudicially to the Southern Confederate States is at present contemplated.

“I feel entire confidence that an immediate demand for an answer to the communication of the Commissioners will be productive of evil and not of good. I do not believe that it should be pressed.”

Justice Campbell made it clear to the commissioners, however, that he understood full well Seward’s true motivation, which was to calm things long enough that secession would “wither under sunshine.”

The commissioners agreed that for the time being they would not press their demands, and Campbell relayed this to Seward.

The commissioners then telegraphed their own Secretary of State Toombs in Montgomery and told him they knew that if they pushed Seward they could get an immediate answer to their official note, but that the answer would likely be negative, and if so, “adverse to recognition and peace.” It was best now to wait, they said. “We are sure that within five days Sumter will be evacuated.” This would ease the tension, they reasoned, and might make Washington more receptive to recognizing them as official delegates of the Confederacy. “With a few days’ delay a favorable answer may be had. Our personal interests command us to press. Duty to our country commands us to wait. What shall we do?”

This was Friday, March 15; if Justice Campbell was correct, the problem of Sumter would be resolved by the following Wednesday. Toombs approved. He authorized the commissioners to wait “a reasonable time” and then to contact him for further instructions.

IN FACT, SEWARD HAD already prepared a formal answer to the commissioners’ demands but did not give it to them. Rather, he wrote it in the form of a for-the-record memorandum to be deposited in the State Department’s archive, accessible to anyone who chose to retrieve it. He did not sign it. He filed it that Friday.

This was a curious form of political brinksmanship, very much in line with Seward’s penchant for quiet manipulation, or “line-pulling,” as backroom dealings were known. He could not send this memo directly to the commissioners, because doing so would constitute a form of official recognition. He understood the quandary the commissioners now confronted: If they truly wanted the government’s response, they could retrieve the memorandum from the archive. By this point they knew of its existence. But its contents would shatter any hope they had of receiving formal recognition and, Seward believed, would likely trigger an attack on Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens.

If they did not ask for it, the memo would simply reside in the archive, unopened and unread.

Seward believed that the longer the commissioners waited, the more likely it was that the Sumter crisis would be resolved peacefully; that absent an incendiary event, the South’s commitment to secession must eventually wane.

The memorandum would remain undisturbed in the department’s archive for another twenty-four days.

AT SUMTER, ANDERSON ASKED Quartermaster Hall to provide him with an accounting of all the food supplies on hand. Hall reported back on Thursday, March 21. The fort’s supply of salt pork was now down to twenty-six barrels, from thirty-eight in late January. The supply of flour had dwindled alarmingly, down to six barrels, from thirty-seven. At least now, however, there was a fresh supply of candles: three boxes of them.

Firewood for fuel was in especially short supply and much in need. Even though it was now officially spring, the weather was changeable, pleasant one day, cold and blustery the next, with damaging winds. The day before the spring equinox, which arrived at nine-fifty A.M. on March 20, snow had fallen. A chest cold began circulating within the fort; its hospital reported half a dozen cases of dysentery. To provide heat the garrison retrieved floating logs that drifted near the fort. They also broke apart unneeded gun carriages and disassembled the various sheds and other temporary structures that had initially cluttered the parade ground.

Rumor that Lincoln planned to surrender Sumter finally reached the garrison, but Captain Foster was skeptical. He continued improving the fort’s defenses. However, just in case an evacuation order did arrive, he also began taking an inventory of all federal property within its walls.