FORT SUMTER

Peculiar Circumstances

SATURDAY, APRIL 13

PRIVATE YOUNG REMAINED OUTSIDE THE FORT AND AT AROUND ONE o’clock noted that firing from the Confederate batteries had halted. The sun shone; clouds sped; smoke poured over the ramparts; but now, suddenly, there was quiet, save for the sound of waves against the rock foundation of the fort.

The delay made the oarsmen uneasy. They urgently wished to depart, Young saw, and expressed the belief that Anderson “must have killed the other gentleman”—meaning Wigfall—and that the same would happen to Young if he remained.

ANDERSON FOUND THE INTERLOPER: Louis T. Wigfall, wild-haired, half-soaked, holding a sword with a white handkerchief skewered at the end.

Wigfall had been authorized merely to inquire as to what Anderson now planned to do, but, never one to bank his fires, instead told Anderson that he had come to negotiate the fort’s surrender.

Anderson asked what terms he proposed to offer.

“Any terms that you may desire,” Wigfall said: “—your own terms—the precise nature of which General Beauregard will arrange with you.”

With Sumter in flames and out of food, its men exhausted, Anderson knew the time had come. He said he would be willing to accept the same terms that Beauregard had proposed two days earlier in his initial ultimatum: to evacuate the fort, along with all small arms and personal and regimental property, and to salute its flag, and then have the garrison transported to whatever post he wished.

Wigfall agreed. Anderson ordered Sumter’s American flag removed and replaced with a white flag.

Moments later Wigfall stormed out to the wharf through Sumter’s shattered main gate flushed with excitement. Major Anderson, he exclaimed to Private Young and the oarsmen, had surrendered the fort to him. The battle was over; the Confederacy had won.

Wigfall prodded the oarsmen to make maximum speed back to Morris Island. One remarked, “I hope if I ever bring another buckra man to a fight, the Lord will kill me”—buckra being a slang term for white. Another oarsman was more philosophical. “Now that it is all over and I am alive, I am glad I came. It will be a good thing to tell my wife.” To which the third replied, “That may be so, but I would not like to try it again.”

Private Young was inclined to agree. He felt he deserved some kind of acknowledgment for the danger to which he had been exposed. He persuaded Wigfall to bring him along to Charleston if Wigfall were sent to personally announce his achievement to General Beauregard.

As their boat approached Morris Island, with Wigfall waving wildly, the beach ahead filled with jubilant soldiers and officers. It was one-fifty P.M. when the boat reached the beach, according to Asst. Surgeon Francis Parker. “Boat returning,” he wrote in his telegraphic style. “Wigfall waving his hat—cheers—she nears the shore, he stands erect and shouts ‘Sumter is ours’—Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, three cheers boys,—boat in surf, men rush in and seize Wigfall and Young—they raise them on their shoulders, great cheering—Wigfall shouting, men scrambling, hats waving, hurrah for South Carolina.”

SOON AFTER WIGFALL’S DEPARTURE, another boat approached Fort Sumter—so soon that it could not possibly be carrying any sort of response to Wigfall’s news. This boat contained three more Confederate officers, these from Charleston, who knew nothing of Wigfall’s prior visit.

Upon landing they were escorted to Major Anderson and told him that Beauregard had sent them “to inquire if he needed any assistance.”

“Gentlemen,” Anderson said, perplexed, “do I understand you have come direct from General Beauregard?”

When the officers affirmed this, Anderson’s confusion turned to anger. He had just negotiated a surrender with a man who had no authority to do so. Anderson condemned Wigfall’s unauthorized venture as “an exceedingly disagreeable and embarrassing mistake.”

The officers asked Anderson to write down the surrender terms Wigfall had proposed. Anderson did so. But he was still angry; he felt he had been deceived—so angry that he threatened to again fly the fort’s American flag and told the officers that he was sorry he had taken it down in the first place. He would not have done so, he said, had he known Wigfall had come on his own whim, not Beauregard’s orders.

In light of these “peculiar circumstances,” the Confederate officers urged Anderson not to reraise his flag—which would immediately have reignited the fighting—and instead to wait until they could show the terms to Beauregard and return with his reply.

Grudgingly, Anderson agreed; the men left; the white flag stayed put.

ON MORRIS ISLAND, as Private Young had anticipated, General Simons ordered Wigfall to proceed immediately to Charleston to report his coup to Beauregard. True to his promise, Wigfall took Private Young with him, this time in a sturdier boat. Several officers joined them, including Col. James Chesnut, Mary’s husband, and John L. Manning, her co-flirtationist. They brought the flag of the Palmetto Guard on a staff and flew it from the boat. The route took them close to Fort Sumter, where they saw members of Anderson’s garrison sitting on the exterior esplanade for respite from the smoke and fire within. Deeming it ungentlemanly to keep the palmetto flag prominently displayed when passing so near, Wigfall ordered it dipped out of respect for what the Union men had been through.

A steamer took them aboard and brought them to Charleston. Private Young promptly fell asleep on a soft bench, only to be awakened shortly afterward by a rough shake from Wigfall, who ordered him to carry the palmetto flag to Beauregard’s headquarters. Young was reluctant at first. His main goal in wanting to come along to the city was “to get home, relieve the anxiety of my family, and get dry raiment.” Wigfall would not let him go. This, he proclaimed, was a duty Young owed to his company.

A boisterous crowd met them upon landing. Wigfall was again lifted aloft and carried away. Private Young and the officers struggled to avoid the same fate.

Chesnut and Manning wore their bright-blue uniforms with sashes and swords. Not Private Young: “I was a sorry looking object without jacket; trousers shrunk six inches too short; shirt torn; it and my face black with smoke,” Young recalled. As the group walked from the wharf, some onlookers concluded that the two shiny blue officers were in fact Anderson and Doubleday and that Young had taken them prisoner. “I was asked, in an undertone, which was Major Anderson, and if the other was Capt. Doubleday,” Young wrote.

One of his family’s house servants spotted Young and hurried back to report that he was “crooking arms with Gen. Anderson.”

AT SEVEN P.M. A group of four Confederate officers sailed out to Sumter and negotiated the final details of Anderson’s surrender. The major insisted on one additional concession: His parting homage to the flag was to consist of a one-hundred-gun salute. In honor of Anderson’s gallantry, the Confederate officers agreed. The evacuation would take place the next day, Sunday, April 14, when Anderson’s men were to be transported by steamship to the fleet still waiting off the bar.

General Beauregard rewarded the Palmetto Guard by granting the entire company the honor of taking part in the occupation of Fort Sumter. The Guard, in turn, chose Edmund Ruffin to carry the Guard’s flag into the fort.