FORT SUMTER

Doubleday’s Revenge

SATURDAY, APRIL 13

THE LOSS OF SUMTER’S FLAG WAS FOR ANDERSON AND HIS MEN A heartbreaking and humiliating event. The flag was a tactile representation of nationhood. In merely firing on it, the Confederates who claimed so noisily to revere honor had engaged in a singularly dishonorable act. To bring it down by gunfire was heinous beyond measure.

Sumter’s unofficial infantryman, Peter Hart, the New York City police officer who had accompanied Anderson’s wife on her surprise visit to the fort, set off through the smoke and fire and came back with a long spar to replace the shattered flagstaff. Hart also retrieved the flag and nailed it by its edge to the spar. He then fixed the spar to a gun carriage on the parapet level, all this while fully exposed to Confederate fire. Once again the wind caught the flag. It did not fly as high as it had, but it did fly, and in impossibly dramatic fashion. Its new height was not enough to overtop the smoke billowing from the fort, but at intervals wind gusts created temporary clearings that revealed the flag gamely flying amid striations of smoke. To the onlookers on Charleston’s Battery, the scene had a strange beauty: black smoke, white pillows of cloud, dazzling blue sea and sky, and over the water an indigo shadow cast by pulsing orbs of smoke backlit by the sun.

For Captain Doubleday, gallantry was fine, but he wanted a more concrete form of redress. Before the bombardment began he had noticed through his spyglass that Moultrie House, the resort hotel on Sullivan’s Island up the beach from Fort Moultrie, was full of what appeared to be Confederate officers and troops using the hotel as a barracks. The hotel was an airy two-story structure with piazzas surrounding each level. Doubleday directed two of his gun crews to take aim at the second story, then ordered them to fire. Two forty-two-pound cannonballs sailed toward the hotel, their passage through the sky visible to a careful watcher.

“The crashing of the shot, which went through the whole length of the building among the clapboards and interior partitions, must have been something fearful to those who were within,” wrote Doubleday with evident glee. “They came rushing out in furious haste, and tumbled over each other until they reached the bottom of the front steps, in one writhing, tumultuous mass.”

The shots killed no one.

THE BRIGHT WEATHER REVEALED with fresh clarity that the U.S. ships were still off the bar. None showed any sign of advancing. For the men at Sumter this was perplexing and frustrating. Perversely, it also angered many among the ranks of the Confederates, who could not understand why the fleet did not come to rescue Anderson and his garrison. This did not, however, cause their batteries to relent in their bombardment. Mortar rounds fell among Sumter’s barracks and officers quarters, where they started fresh fires.

As the flames spread, the risk grew that even the barrels of powder rescued from the magazine would explode. Anderson ordered all but five thrown into the sea through the embrasures. He understood that this decision had broader consequences than simply helping preserve the safety of his garrison. The powder in the five remaining barrels would be consumed quickly, leaving the fort unable to fight. Without food and powder, they would need to surrender soon—unless the U.S. ships outside the bar managed to deliver the promised men and supplies.

At Sumter the effort to fight the inferno and to jettison the endangered powder caused a reduction in the rate of fire from the fort’s guns, “a shot every two or three minutes to let them know we were not giving up yet,” wrote Private Thompson. Sumter became a cauldron of heat, smoke, and lacerating shrapnel. One soldier suffered a severe but not mortal injury, “a large piece of shell tearing some frightful flesh wounds in his legs,” Thompson wrote.

The wind briefly opened a clearing in the casemate where Thompson was stationed. A group of gunners rushed toward him bearing muskets. Only the much-feared infantry assault could have made these men leave their posts. It took a moment or two for Thompson to grasp what was occurring.

There was a man outside the fort, standing on the esplanade, waving a sword and white flag and asking to come inside.