WASHINGTON

Trust

MARCH 20–23

SEWARD HAD PROMISED THE CONFEDERATE COMMISSIONERS THAT Fort Sumter would be evacuated within five days. The five days passed.

During that week, Washington experienced a period of brutal cold. On March 18 the temperature, as recorded by diarist Charles Francis Adams, had fallen to six degrees Fahrenheit, “two degrees below any point reached at Washington, during the Winter.” Adams set out for Boston and on arrival there found high winds and heavy snow. “The winter,” he wrote, “seems to be just setting in.”

It was now Wednesday, March 20, the first day of spring and the date that Fort Sumter, according to Seward’s projection, was to have been evacuated. But as best anyone could tell it remained in federal hands. Confederate Secretary of State Toombs in Montgomery sent a five-word telegram to the commissioners in Washington to ask what was happening. Its peculiar and almost plaintive phrasing suggested growing unease: “We can’t hear from you.”

To which the commissioners replied, “You have not heard from us because there is no change. If there is faith in man we may rely on the assurances we have as to the status. Time is essential to a peaceful issue of this mission. In the present posture of affairs precipitation is war. We are all agreed.”

But the commissioners also were uneasy. They wired an inquiry to General Beauregard in Charleston. “Has Sumter been evacuated? Any action by Anderson indicating it?”

None, Beauregard answered. “Sumter not evacuated,” he telegraphed back, “no indications whatever of it. Anderson working still on its defenses.”

Alarmed, the commissioners asked their intermediary, Justice Campbell, to again meet with Seward. On Thursday, March 21, Campbell visited the State Department accompanied by Justice Nelson of New York. Seward assured them both that all was well but declared himself too busy just then for a meeting; the two should come back the next day. On the strength of this brief encounter, Campbell told the commissioners that his confidence that Sumter would be evacuated remained “unabated.”

The justices returned to the State Department the next morning, Friday, March 22, and heard a “buoyant and sanguine” Seward assure them that the fort would indeed be evacuated; it was simply taking longer than expected.

This prompted Campbell to write a second memorandum for the commissioners in which he reiterated his confidence that the evacuation would happen and assured them that “no delay that has occurred excites in me any apprehension or distrust.” Moreover, he told them he did not expect any detrimental change in “the state of things” at Fort Pickens. “I counsel inactivity in making demands on this Government for the present.”

Later that day, Justice Nelson left Washington for New York, thereby ending his role as co-intermediary, but not before assuring Campbell that Seward “will not deceive you.”

CAPT. GUSTAVUS FOX, THE naval officer whom Lincoln assigned to scout conditions at Fort Sumter, reached Charleston on the morning of March 21. Fox was able to meet with Governor Pickens, who after some debate granted him permission to visit the fort.

This, too, was a matter of honor: Fox gave Pickens his word that the visit was a peaceful one, intended solely to collect the “accurate information” that Lincoln wanted, and showed the governor an order from General Scott to that effect. But honor only went so far. Pickens also required that a Confederate naval official accompany Fox to the fort. This was Capt. Henry J. Hartstene, a former U.S. Navy officer now in charge of South Carolina’s naval forces, who happened to be one of Fox’s friends. Pickens directed him to stay with Fox the whole time. Negotiating this permission apparently took quite a while, for Fox and Hartstene did not reach the fort until around eight-thirty P.M., when, well after dark, unexpected and unannounced, they stepped from their boat onto the fort’s wharf.

The visit lasted two hours, during which Fox managed to have a brief conversation alone with Anderson. He and the major climbed to the parapet, a precarious three-story ascent in the pitch-dark of the fort, and there in a serendipitous moment Fox found affirmation for his plan. As he looked out on the water he heard the oars of a boat but could not see it until it almost reached the wharf, vivid proof of the power of darkness to shield Union boats seeking to deliver supplies and troops.

Anderson revealed to Fox the dire condition of the fort’s dwindling stockpile of food and authorized Fox to report to the War Department “that the 15th of April, at noon, would be the period beyond which the fort couldn’t be held unless supplies were furnished.”

Fox left for Washington that night.

AFTER THE VISIT, CAPTAIN HARTSTENE met with Beauregard, who asked, “Were you with Captain Fox all the time of his visit?”

“All but a short period when he was with Major Anderson,” Hartstene replied.

“I fear,” Beauregard said, “that we shall have occasion to regret that short period.”

ANDERSON WAS TROUBLED BY Fox’s conclusion that a reinforcement mission could succeed. Fox had gone so far as to point out a location outside the rear wall of the fort that seemed well suited for the landing of troops and supplies.

Anderson disagreed. The next day, March 22, he reported Fox’s assessment to the War Department and sought to refute his conclusion. “I have examined the point alluded to by Mr. Fox last night,” he wrote. “A vessel lying there will be under the fire of thirteen guns from Fort Moultrie.” He added that Sumter’s chief engineer, Captain Foster, had told him that even at high tide a vessel with a ten-foot draft seeking to land at the optimal point adjacent to the fort would have to anchor forty feet out in the passage. “The Department can decide what the chances will be of a safe debarkation and unloading at that point under these circumstances.”

On arrival in Washington, perhaps to increase the likelihood that his plan would be adopted, Captain Fox hinted that Anderson’s loyalty might be compromised, that his opposition to a reinforcement mission was motivated by his sympathy for the South. Fox later wrote, “I did intend” to provide Anderson with “a complete history of the conditions of things at Washington, and the dilemma Mr. Lincoln was in on account of contrary counsels, but as I found him to be on the other side, politically as well as in military point of view, I refrained.”

Captain Fox proved to be a compelling salesman. His confidence was reassuring, and it persuaded Lincoln that a mission to resupply Fort Sumter would indeed be feasible. But for Lincoln, one more question remained.