Posted on 04/12/2007 9:34:54 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
On March 5, 1861, the day after his inauguration as president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln received a message from Maj. Robert Anderson, commander of the U.S. troops holding Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The message stated that there was less than a six week supply of food left in the fort.
Attempts by the Confederate government to settle its differences with the Union were spurned by Lincoln, and the Confederacy felt it could no longer tolerate the presense of a foreign force in its territory. Believing a conflict to be inevitable, Lincoln ingeniously devised a plan that would cause the Confederates to fire the first shot and thus, he hoped, inspire the states that had not yet seceded to unite in the effort to restore the Union.
On April 8, Lincoln notified Gov. Francis Pickens of South Carolina that he would attempt to resupply the fort. The Confederate commander at Charleston, Gen.P.G.T. Beauregard, was ordered by the Confederate government to demand the evacuation of the fort and if refused, to force its evacuation. On April 11, General Beauregard delivered the ultimatum to Anderson, who replied, "Gentlemen, if you do not batter the fort to pieces about us, we shall be starved out in a few days." On direction of the Confederate government in Montgomery, Beauregard notified Anderson that if he would state the time of his evacuation, the Southern forces would hold their fire. Anderson replied that he would evacuate by noon on April 15 unless he received other instructions or additional supplies from his government. (The supply ships were expected before that time.) Told that his answer was unacceptable and that Beauregard would open fire in one hour, Anderson shook the hands of the messengers and said in parting, "If we do not meet again in this world, I hope we may meet in the better one." At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, 1861, 43 Confederate guns in a ring around Fort Sumter began the bombardment that initiated the bloodiest war in American history.
In her Charleston hotel room, diarist Mary Chesnet heard the opening shot. "I sprang out of bed." she wrote. "And on my knees--prostrate--I prayed as I never prayed before." The shelling of Fort Sumter from the batteries ringing the harbor awakened Charleston's residents, who rushed out into the predawn darkness to watch the shells arc over the water and burst inside the fort. Mary Chesnut went to the roof of her hotel, where the men were cheering the batteries and the women were praying and crying. Her husband, Col. James Chesnut, had delivered Beauregard's message to the fort. "I knew my husband was rowing around in a boat somewhere in that dark bay," she wrote, "and who could tell what each volley accomplished of death and destruction?"
Inside the fort, no effort was made to return the fire for more than two hours. The fort's supply of ammunition was ill-suited for the task at hand, and because there were no fuses for their explosive shells, only solid shot could be used against the Rebel batteries. The fort's biggest guns, heavy Columbiads and eight-inch howitzers, were on the top tier of the fort and there were no masonry casemates to protect the gunners, so Anderson opted to use only the casemated guns on the lower tier. About 7:00 A.M., Capt. Abner Doubleday, the fort's second in command, was given the honor of firing the first shot in defense of the fort. The firing continued all day, the federals firing slowly to conserve ammunition. At night the fire from the fort stopped, but the confederates still lobbed an occasional shell in Sumter.
Although they had been confined inside Fort Sumter for more than three months, unsupplied and poorly nourished, the men of the Union garrison vigorously defended their post from the Confederate bombardment that began on the morning of April 12, 1861. Several times, red-hod cannonballs had lodged in the fort's wooden barracks and started fires. But each time, the Yankee soldiers, with a little help from an evening rainstorm, had extinguished the flames. The Union garrison managed to return fire all day long, but because of a shortage of cloth gunpowder cartridges, they used just six of their cannon and fired slowly.
The men got little sleep that night as the Confederate fire continued, and guards kept a sharp lookout for a Confederate attack or relief boats. Union supply ships just outside the harbor had been spotted by the garrison, and the men were disappointed that the ships made no attempt to come to their relief.
After another breakfast of rice and salt pork on the morning of April 13, the exhausted Union garrison again began returning cannon fire, but only one round every 10 minutes. Soon the barracks again caught fire from the Rebel hot shot, and despite the men's efforts to douse the flames, by 10:00 A.M. the barracks were burning out of control. Shortly thereafter, every wooden structure in the fort was ablaze, and a magazine containing 300 pounds of gunpowder was in danger of exploding. "We came very near being stifled with the dense livid smoke from the burning buildings," recalled one officer. "The men lay prostrate on the ground, with wet hankerchiefs over their mouths and eyes, gasping for breath."
The Confederate gunners saw the smoke and were well aware of the wild uproar they were causing in the island fort. They openly showed their admiration for the bravery of the Union garrison by cheering and applauding when, after a prolonged stillness, the garrison sent a solid shot screaming in their direction.
"The crasing of the shot, the bursting of the shells, the falling of the walls, and the roar of the flames, made a pandemonium of the fort," wrote Capt. Abner Doubleday on the afternoon of April 13, 1861. He was one of the Union garrison inside Fort Sumter in the middle of South Carolina's Charleston harbor. The fort's large flag staff was hit by fire from the surrounding Confederate batteries, and the colors fell to the ground. Lt. Norman J. Hall braved shot and shell to race across the parade ground to retrieve the flag. Then he and two others found a substitute flagpole and raised the Stars and Stripes once more above the fort.
Once the flag came down, Gen. P.G.T. Beaugregard, who commanded the Confederate forces, sent three of his aides to offer the fort's commander, Union Maj. Robert Anderson, assistance in extinguishing the fires. Before they arrived they saw the garrison's flag raised again, and then it was replaced with a white flag. Arriving at the fort, Beaugregard's aides were informed that the garrison had just surrendered to Louis T. Wigfall, a former U.S. senator from Texas. Wigfall, completely unauthorized, had rowed out to the fort from Morris Island, where he was serving as a volunteer aide, and received the surrender of the fort. The terms were soon worked out, and Fort Sumter, after having braved 33 hours of bombardment, its food and ammunition nearly exhausted, fell on April 13, 1861, to the curshing fire power of the Rebels. Miraculously, no one on either side had been killed or seriously wounded.
The generous terms of surrender allowed Anderson to run up his flag for a hunderd-gun salute before he and his men evacuated the fort the next day. The salute began at 2:00 P.M. on April 14, but was cut short to 50 guns after an accidental explosion killed one of the gunners and mortally wounded another. Carrying their tattered banner, the men marched out of the fort and boarded a boat that ferried them to the Union ships outside the harbor. They were greeted as heroes on their return to the North.
Grant was a slaveowner too.
What is the point?
The Confederacy did NOT steal anything, unlike Lincoln’s war criminals that invaded the South.
like i said, WHAT are you drinking these days???
must be FIREWATER!
free dixie,sw
they will TRY to call it something else, but it is TYRANNY! (check out my tag-line)
free dixie,sw
Castle Pinkney, Fort Moultrie, the Charleston Armory, revenue cutter William Aiken, Fort Johnson, Fort Pulaski, U.S. Arsenal at Mt. Vernon, Alabama, Fort Morgan, Fort Gaines, Fort Marion, the Arsenal at Apalachicola, Fort Johnston, Fort Caswell, the Arsenal and Barracks at Baton Rouge, For Caswell, Fort Jackson, Fort St. Phillips, Fort Barrancas, Fort McRea, the Pensacola Navy Yards, Fort Taylor, Fort Pike, the Navy steamer Dana, the Arsenal at Augusta, Fort Macomb, Oglethorpe Barracks, U.S. Mint and Customs House in New Orleans, the Arsenal at Little Rock, the Arsenal and Barracks at San Antonio, the Revenue Cutter Dodge, Ringgold Barracks, and dozens of other forts and arsenals and customs houses and mints. All seized without compensation by the rebel states. All stolen.
Someone should have told Jeff Davis that.
What is the point?
The point is that nobody denies Grant owned a slave because there is evidence to support that. But stand watie persists in claiming that is namesake was poor as dirt when he was, in fact, a fairly well-to-do, slave owning, plantation owner.
Did the South take posession of federal property which did not belong to them? Did the not do so without compensation? That is stealing in anybody's book.
Ft Sumpter was no more federal property than Yellowstone park is the property of the NPS. such "federal land" belongs SOLELY to the STATES/CITIZENS & is ONLY "administered" by the feds.
once SECESSION was a FACT, Ft Sumter was ENEMY PROPERTY in a FOREIGN country,. (fyi, that's what you DYs are BLINDED about. the CSA was NO LONGER the USA.)
the STATE of SC/the CSA was well within their RIGHTS as citizens to attempt to remove FOREIGN TROOPS from their country, after they had requested than the USA remove them.
fyi, your post to the contrary is SILLY & NONSENSE. nothing more & nothing less than BILGE, too.
free dixie,sw
Agreed. A change happened around 1900. Definitely in place by the time Wilson was in office.
Patton was also descended from AmRevWar General Mercer, who was sadly surrounded by redcoats and impaled from all directions at Princeton.
This was his mother’s side.
Just FYI for the often-forgotten part.
Interesting question, since in a letter to Watie from his wife, she says, "I will get me a house in Bellview so the children can go to school it (is) impossible for (me) to stay here I will get some one to stay and take care of our corn it will do to fatten our horses you must write every chance and direct it to Lanagin and let him mail it to Rusk Bellview, it looks like I cant live and not hear from you. You must write and tell me when it will be safe to come. I sent the bay horse the black was to poor to go. I will bring him. you can either send that back or keep him till I come. I can sell him for six hundred here..." ( June 8, 1863)
In another letter she writes, "I will watch and if I can I will buy that tobacco. I cant buy one thing with old money. You must send me some that will pass I told Oakes to trade on that he had and sell what he bought for new I have not sold my horses yet. I cant see how I can do without them unless I was at home and stay there." (June 12, 1864). Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 1, No. 1, January, 1921: SOME LETTERS OF GENERAL STAND WATIE.
do you HAVE a point, TROLL??
do you REALLY believe ANYONE here believes ANYTHING you post since (at least & maybe NOT before, either) you "shot yourself in the foot", TROLL???
fyi, you are a KNOWN deceiver, as well as a LITTLE TROLL, who evidently has NO LIFE. NOBODY (with the possible exception of the members of "THE STUPID CLUB" & they are so DUMB that they'll believe ANYTHING!) believes you any more.
that's WHY the vast majority of people on these threads will NOT post TO you; MOST will NOT even READ your deceptions/lies/foolishness. fyi, you have RUINED yourself on FR!
laughing AT you, TROLL.
free dixie,sw
Sure, the point is that clearly Mrs. Watie was back at home with a couple of horses, so any claim that he was too poor to afford one is obviously incorrect. Unless you're going to claim that the Chronicles of Oklahoma from 1921 is a lie.
NOBODY believes you anymore about ANYTHING, absent INDEPENDENT PROOF. after i've read "the Chronicles" for myself, and only then, will i comment on the correctness of what you SAY is in the book. (fyi, because something is IN a BOOK, does NOT make it FACTUAL. BOOKS are FILLED with MISinformation/outright fiction/ mistakes.)
you are RUINED on FR. ("heyworthLESS", you should take "the STUPID CLUB" members with you, as you head to DU. they LIKE trolls/liars/fools/useful idiots on DU.)
your credibility is G-O-N-E, GONE! TROLLS often ruin themselves, given "enough rope". (your rope was posting PRIVATE messages WITHOUT consent of the SENDER! laughing AT you for doing something THAT stupid/SELF-destructive.)
laughing AT you, TROLL.
free dixie,sw
Stand Watie: No evidence.
It's really quite simple.
I warned you that I'd do it if you persisted in threatening me.
You persisted.
That consitutes consent.
All property of the Confederate States of America.
Stolen property is still stolen.
YEP they DID.
Ft Sumpter was no more federal property than Yellowstone park is the property of the NPS. such "federal land" belongs SOLELY to the STATES/CITIZENS & is ONLY "administered" by the feds.
Then as such didn't it belong to ALL the states and ALL the citizens?
once SECESSION was a FACT, Ft Sumter was ENEMY PROPERTY in a FOREIGN country,. (fyi, that's what you DYs are BLINDED about. the CSA was NO LONGER the USA.)
So we're back to you trying to justify theft by claiming it was enemy proprety. And I note you don't say 'foreign' property but 'enemy' property. Considering you believed the U.S. to be the South's enemy from the very beginning no wonder the South resorted to war.
the STATE of SC/the CSA was well within their RIGHTS as citizens to attempt to remove FOREIGN TROOPS from their country, after they had requested than the USA remove them.
How else were they going to steal the property unless they got the owners out of it?
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