WASHINGTON

Dismay and Dishonor

APRIL 8

THE COMMISSIONERS READ SEWARD’S MEMORANDUM, WRITTEN OMINOUSLY in the third person.

“The Secretary of State understands the events which have recently occurred differently from the aspect in which they are presented by Mssrs. Forsyth and Crawford,” Seward wrote. (At the time Seward prepared the memorandum, the third commissioner, André Roman, had not yet arrived.) “He sees in them, not a rightful and accomplished revolution, and an independent nation, with an established government, but rather a perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement.”

Seward declared himself unable to satisfy the commissioners’ request for a meeting with the president. “On the contrary, he is obliged to state to Mssrs. Forsyth and Crawford, that he has no authority, nor is he at liberty to recognize them as diplomatic agents, or hold correspondence or other communication with them.”

The commissioners had no reason to be startled by this rejection, given Seward’s persistent unwillingness to meet, but they were outraged all the same. This was yet another affront to their Southern honor.

Their reply steamed with anger. They accused Secretary Seward of dwelling in “delusions” and told him, “You now, with a persistence untaught and uncured by the ruin which has been wrought, refuse to recognize the great fact presented to you of a completed and successful revolution; you close your eyes to the existence of the Government founded upon it.”

They predicted “blood and mourning” and warned that history would lay the blame for it with Lincoln. “The undersigned, [on] behalf of their Government and people, accept the gage of battle thus thrown down to them.”

Seward felt he could not directly answer even this, lest some shard of recognition be passed along to the commissioners; instead, with a little twist of the knife, he filed a new note in the archive consisting of a single sentence in which, again adopting the third-person voice, he stated that he presumed that the commissioners, having been formally told that he could not engage in official communication with them, would not expect a reply to their letter “beyond the simple acknowledgement of the receipt thereof, which he hereby very cheerfully gives.”

ON MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 8, Lincoln’s two messengers, Chew and Talbot, arrived in Charleston and made their way to Governor Pickens’s headquarters at the Charleston Hotel bearing Lincoln’s statement of his intent to resupply Sumter. There Chew read it aloud and then handed Pickens the text: “I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that if such attempt be not resisted no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort.”

Pickens summoned General Beauregard and read the message to him. Captain Talbot then requested permission to proceed to Sumter and rejoin the garrison. Beauregard “peremptorily refused,” Talbot recalled. Talbot asked if he could at least meet with Anderson and afterward return to Charleston, his intent clearly to deliver the copy of Lincoln’s April 4 instructions, which he also carried with him. This request, too, was refused.

Chew and Talbot then set off for the train station, accompanied by two Confederate escorts, and left the city at eleven P.M. to return to Washington. Anderson himself did not directly receive a copy of Lincoln’s resupply notice but soon learned of it.

Beauregard immediately sent a telegram to Confederate War Secretary Walker in Montgomery to notify him of the visit. In a masterly bit of editorial compression, Beauregard distilled Lincoln’s message to its essence: “Authorized messenger from Lincoln just informed Governor Pickens and myself that provisions would be sent to Sumter peaceably, otherwise by force.”

To which Walker immediately replied, “Under no circumstances are you to allow provisions to be sent to Fort Sumter.”

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT NIGHT, after receiving Lincoln’s agents, Beauregard sent a brief, stern note to Major Anderson notifying him that all mail service to and from Sumter was now suspended. For unclear reasons, but possibly because high winds and rough water hampered delivery, Anderson did not personally receive this message until 2:15 the next afternoon.

Alarmed, he wrote to the general asking him, ever so politely, to return all the fort’s outgoing mail, which he presumed to be sitting in the Charleston post office. There was valuable intelligence in those letters, Anderson knew, and one damning confession.

Beauregard denied his request.