Also a ship wouldn’t have gotten through.
The ship Harriet Lane fired on sailed out Charleston harbor.
So the entrance was not completely blocked. Remember, the plan did not call for the war ships or the supply ship to enter the harbor. Lie off, transfer the cargo to small boats and have them towed in to the Fort. Same plan would have worked for an unarmed merchant ship with an unarmed tug.
No difference. Davis would still have fired on Sumter or the supply ship. He was not going to allow Sumter to be provisioned.
Charleston stopped selling provisions to Anderson shortly after he moved into Sumter.
Back when I first started discussing the Civil War with people I thought the Harriet Lane was an egregious example of unnecessary belligerence on the part of South Carolina.
Last year I learned that the Harriet Lane was carrying a secret contingent of men intended to be used to reinforce Sumter. In other words, they were engaging in deliberately provocative belligerence against the Confederates.
Still, this did not excuse the behavior of the Citadel Cadets who fired at them without provocation, because how could they have known the Harriet Lane was secretly carrying arms and munitions to be used against them?
And then I learned that these forces were transferred to the Harriet Lane out in the middle of the ocean for the express purpose of keeping it a secret, meaning they knew that if people knew the truth, they would be angry about it.
And then I learned, word of what the Harriet Lane was carrying did in fact reach Charleston long before the Harriet Lane got there, so people did know that the Harriet Lane was on a belligerent mission against them.
And so now what I used to believe has been shown to be wrong based on the arrival of new information that I previously did not know.
And so I changed my mind about this incident.
Remember, the plan did not call for the war ships or the supply ship to enter the harbor. Lie off, transfer the cargo to small boats and have them towed in to the Fort. Same plan would have worked for an unarmed merchant ship with an unarmed tug.
If this is true, why then did Admiral David Porter write in his account that all those ships would have been quickly sunk? Did Admiral Porter have it wrong, and he simply didn't understand the plan?