FORT SUMTER

Wigfall

SATURDAY, APRIL 13

FROM EDMUND RUFFIN’S VANTAGE POINT, THE SUMTER FLAG APPEARED to remain down. The officers at Moultrie could see its makeshift replacement; Ruffin and the lookouts on Morris Island could not.

The apparent absence of the flag and the lack of return fire caused the commander on Morris Island, Brig. Gen. James Simons, to conclude that conditions within Sumter had become so grave that Anderson might be ready to surrender. He ordered his batteries to cease fire. He directed Texas fire-eater and former U.S. senator Col. Louis T. Wigfall to row out to Sumter “for the purpose of ascertaining from Major Anderson whether his intention was to surrender, his flag being down and his quarters in flames,” according to a later report by General Beauregard.

Wigfall, now one of Beauregard’s aides-de-camp, was a big man known for drinking heavily and for violent fits of passion. His face, according to Russell of the London Times, “was one not to be forgotten—a straight, broad brow, from which the hair rose up like the vegetation on a river bank, beetling black eyebrows.” His permanent expression was one of barely suppressed rage.

Behaving with what General Simons called “his accustomed indifference to danger,” Wigfall gladly accepted the mission and the opportunity it presented to display courage and honor—and draw attention to himself.

A small boat had just landed on Morris Island carrying soldiers back from a repair task in Charleston. Wigfall commandeered the boat and its three enslaved oarsmen, even though the boat was small, had a significant leak, did not have a rudder, and seemed hardly likely to withstand the roiled waters between the island and Sumter. Another officer warned Wigfall that the boat was unsafe and offered to go and get his own much sturdier boat moored in a nearby creek bed. Wigfall would not have it. There was no time to lose; Anderson was in trouble and might not be able to communicate his intentions. “A brave garrison is in great danger, likely to perish for want of help,” Wigfall exclaimed.

The Texan appeared to be “under great excitement,” according to thirty-year-old Private William Gourdin Young of the Palmetto Guard, who helped secure the small boat. Wigfall turned to Young and identified himself, though Young already knew who he was. Wigfall asked Young if he would come along. The private assented after Wigfall assured him that as an aide to Beauregard he had the authority to free him from his regular duties.

When the boat pulled away from shore, Private Young asked Wigfall what he hoped the voyage would achieve. Wigfall told him that he was under orders to go to Sumter “under a flag of truce”—a white flag—to determine what Anderson planned to do now that the fort was aflame and its flag was no longer flying.

Private Young asked, no doubt delicately, how Wigfall expected to approach the fort when he had no white flag with him.

Wigfall acknowledged that he had not thought that far ahead. Undeterred, he pulled out a white handkerchief, drew his sword, and thrust it through two opposing corners to make a primitive flag—too primitive, it turned out, for the ambient weather conditions. “I caught it just as the wind was taking it away,” Private Young wrote.

Young cut two threads from the sleeve of his shirt and, while Wigfall held the sword steady, secured the handkerchief to the sword. Seeking to extract the most drama from the moment, Wigfall stood up in the boat and held the sword and flag aloft, achieving briefly an unintended parody of George Washington crossing the Delaware.

The progress of the boat was visible to onlookers far off in Charleston, among them members of four generations of Private Young’s family watching from the roof of the family home. They had no idea he was in the boat, he later learned, and, upon seeing one cannonball nearly hit it, pronounced the escapade “a foolish risk, and said if sunk the fate was deserved.”

Only when Wigfall was too far out to be recalled did his commander on Morris Island, General Simons, catch sight of the newly rehung American flag at Sumter, briefly visible through the smoke and fire, and realize that in fact Sumter was still on a battle footing. The flag’s new location and reduced height made it invisible to Wigfall.

At about this time a cannonball fired from one of the Confederate guns at Fort Moultrie splashed into the water just ahead of Wigfall’s boat. To Private Young it seemed obvious that this was meant as a warning shot to compel the boat to turn around. He said as much to Wigfall.

But Wigfall huffed that Fort Moultrie had no say in whether he completed his mission. The boat proceeded.

“In a few moments,” Young wrote, “we had another shot so near, it looked as if it was intended to hit us.” In this he was correct, as he discovered later from Moultrie’s commander, Colonel Ripley. When Wigfall’s boat did not stop after the first shot across its bow, Ripley had decided to sink it, reasoning that some self-aggrandizing politician seeking glory was meddling in something that was none of his business.

AFTER THE ARRIVAL OF the second cannonball, the oarsmen in Wigfall’s boat stopped rowing. Water filled half the boat. Without forward motion to propel it over the crests of waves, the boat became prey to the surrounding surf and slipped into a trough, where it nearly became swamped. Wigfall and Young persuaded the oarsmen to begin rowing again. Two rowed; one bailed water. Young stressed the importance of quickly reaching the fort and getting behind its walls. A third cannonball landed so near that the splash poured more water into the hull.

The shelter Private Young had hoped for did not exist. Balls and shells from other batteries on the harbor landed near, and balls that struck the parapets above tore loose showers of brick shrapnel.

Piles of debris blocked access to the fort’s usual landing place. The big door at the main entrance from the wharf had disintegrated and burned. Charred fragments sagged from hinges. A howitzer behind the door lay on its side. Smoke drifted from the remains of the gun’s carriage.

It was apparent that no one at the fort had seen Wigfall’s boat arrive. He and Private Young called out but got no response. Wigfall ordered Young to land the boat as near the main gate as possible. Young entered the water and hauled the boat to shore. Wigfall also climbed out. With great drama he told Young he feared “we had come to the habitation of the dead.”

Wigfall and Young clambered onto the esplanade that circled the fort. They had gone only a short way when Young saw that the oarsmen were getting ready to leave. He raced back just as the men began rowing. He drew his pistol. The men came back. Young ordered them into the water and directed two of them to hold the boat to prevent it from being crushed against the rocks. As before, the third bailed water.

Wigfall continued along the esplanade, hoping to find a way inside. He disappeared around a corner.

AS PRIVATE YOUNG WAITED, two Union officers came out through the shattered entry gate. One was Major Anderson, the other an aide. Anderson asked Young what he was doing standing there with a boat outside the fort. Young explained that he had arrived with a senior Confederate officer bearing a flag of truce, who, unable to draw the attention of anyone within, “had gone around to the other side of the fort in hopes of making an entrance.”

Anderson walked back into the fort. Moments later he returned, annoyed, and said he could not find any officer; he ordered Young to come with him. Young hesitated, convinced that the moment he left the boat, the oarsmen would make their escape. He insisted that Anderson send someone to watch over it. The oarsmen pleaded with Anderson “for God’s sake” to find them a safe place to shelter.

Anderson replied that “they were in as safe a place as was to be found in the neighborhood.”

It was then that a Sumter officer called out to Anderson and told him there was indeed a Confederate officer inside the fort waiting to see him.