FORT SUMTER

Preparations

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10

FOOD WAS ANDERSON’S IMMEDIATE WORRY. HE PLACED THE GARRISON on half rations and forecast that these would last only two more days; to be precise, until dinnertime—meaning the midday meal—on Friday, April 12. The men used the rice they had managed to pick from the shards of window glass broken back in January.

“The Major counsels economy and will not permit any crumbs to be left on the plates,” Asst. Surgeon Crawford wrote in his journal. “At our meals some officers haul out of their pockets crumbs and pieces of crackers—Major reproved D[oubleday] today and called him back to eat a piece of cracker that was left. One cracker to a man morning and night—none at dinner.” For supper, “rice and coffee.” Doubleday found a potato and squirreled it away, Crawford noted. “He said somebody had tramped on it, but had not hurt it much.”

That night, Wednesday, April 10, Anderson ordered his men to move their bedding from their barracks into the casemates on the first level of the fort.

BEAUREGARD WORRIED THAT IF the expected Union fleet arrived that night, conditions favored an attack.

While the winds on the bay remained strong, the tide was expected to peak at about eight P.M. This would add water at the Charleston Bar and make the city’s harbor more accessible. The night was also heavily overcast and therefore utterly dark, with no starlight or moonglow to silhouette the arriving ships.

A detail of soldiers and enslaved men filled three obsolete vessels with combustible materials and positioned them in the channel adjacent to Fort Sumter at a point where enemy ships would have to pass in order to reach the fort. If the Northern fleet did arrive, these hulks were to be set on fire to illuminate the invaders.