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.
MOST just make fun of you & RIDICULE you, behind your back.
frankly, i don't blame them, as you (imVho) are BOTH dishonest & just a little TROLL, who cared NOTHING about the TRUTH or this forum. i think you're here ONLY to be a "pain".
why not "get a life" and head back to DU, from whence i suspect you came.
free dixie,sw
I don't know about your family, and don't care. But General Watie and his family did.
nonetheless we southerners wanted our FREEDOM, just as the forefathers of 1776 did. the NON-slaveowners of dixie were willing to ally with the "planters" for a while to GET freedom. IF our ancestors had won, the NEXT enemy might well have been the southern elites. (the WBTS, for southerners, was a PEASANT UPRISING led by a few professional soldiers, like Lee & Jackson.)
Lee and Jackson were part of the southern elite you dismiss. Both were slave owners, Jackson was a slave owner the day he died. Neither one had a problem with the insitution. In fact, both thought it was the best condition for blacks to be in. Your peasant uprising proposal is sheer fantasy.
DAMNyankees have ALWAYS been HYPOCRYTES/LIARS/SELFrighteous/sanctimonious
As are you Southron twits claiming they were fighting for freedom when a third of the population was exempt from that.
Name one who did, and provide your documentation.
These Federal facilities belonged to the people in the South. The North got to keep their own facilities.
At best federal property belonged to all the states not just the Southern ones, and for the South to seize the property without compensation was theft. By any legal definition you care to reference.
Watie didn't sell anything to raise the regiment he commanded. It was authorized by the rebel government and armed and equipped by them.
I did not know that your argument with Stand had convenient qualifications. I just thought you were looking for a southern commander who outfitted his troops. Hampton surely qualifies.
In the beginning of the war, yes. The last couple years the Cherokee Mt. rifles had to supply their own provisions. The capture of the Union supply train at Cabin Creek Sept. 1864, provided them with provisions for the remainder of the war.
There is much correspondence showing that they had to supply their own needs from their families much of the time.
Here's a snip from a letter to Stand Watie from his wife c. 1864.
" “ I hear that Cooper will not give you any supplies. If he does not I believe that they all are speculating of it and I hope that the last of them will sink. I do not want you to do anything of that kind. I would live on bread and water rather that have it said you had speculated of your people. I believe you have always done what you thought best for your people. If I thought you was working for nothing but to fill your pocket it would trouble me a great deal, but I know it is not else it would have been filled before this time. I know that you are capable of making a living any where if we are let alone after the war is over. We are all sold out I believe.”
an associate of mine who teaches at Grambling Univ. has estimated that there MIGHT have been as many as 25,000 people in ALL of the USA in 1860, who were "concerned" about "the peculiar institution" and/or about the slaves. (they SHOULD have been concerned, as slavery was a hideous evil.)
they SAID they cared. they LIED, as all SELF-righteous,HYPOCRITES do.
btw, MANY of the so-called "leading abolitionists" were IN the "flesh trade", at the same time that they were SAYING that they were against slavery.
GARRISON for ONE hypocrite! the EDITOR-in-CHIEF of "the NY Slimes" for ANOTHER sanctimonious, SELF-righteous, LIAR/hypocrite.
LYING is as natural for a DAMNyankee as breathing, just as it is the NATURE of a serpent to slither.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
i NEVER said that Wade Hampton spent ANY money on his legion. NEITHER did i say that Stand Watie did. (would you care for a "do over"???)
as usual, you're PREVARICATING (i won't call you a LIAR, as i do your "buddy"= "bubba".) again.
YOU are a PROPAGANDIST, so i give you a little "slack". "bubba", otoh, is just a TROLL & a DIShonest one at that.
free dixie,sw
as usual, there was little or nothing ACTUALLY provided in arms/supplies/money/uniforms from Richmond to the Trans-Mississippi units, despite many PROMISES.
free dixie,sw
Are you denying posting message 639 then?
Letter from A.M. Wilson and J.W. Washbourne to Stand Watie dated May 18th, 1861. "We are happy to inform you in accordance with our promise of said letter that would afford you all the aid we could that a certain number of guns, good guns, have been granted to the State of Arkansas, for the use of the Cherokee in the defense of their and our frontier. So, push on with the good work and train your men and apply for these guns." Then there was this post script: "Since the above we have heard that Jefferson Davis is determined to arm and equip the Cherokee, Creeks, and Choctaw. Probably in the course of 6 or 8 weeks there will be...many guns for the Cherokee."
From : "Cherokee Caviliers" by Edward Everett Dale and Gaston Little, pp.106-107
Primary enough for you?
What is so hard to understand that at the beginning of the war they had full support. The South needed the Cherokee. Near the end of the war they couldn’t get zip from them. Much of what was sent was sold by white officers before it ever got to the Watie troops.
You’re both right. All things are not either/or.
i think NOT!
fyi, that is NOT (as YOU are WELL aware) a PRIMARY source.
free dixie,sw
you do NOT (i've known you too long) have a STUPIDITY or a READING COMPREHENSION problem;rather, you have an HONESTY problem!!!
to ALL: go back and READ #639 & you'll see that N-S is INTENTIONALLY trying (UNsuccessfully, i might add) to change the subject to ANYTHING other than he made a MISTAKE! fyi, N-S NEVER admits to MISTAKES, NOR does he admit that there is ANYTHING that he's just plain WRONG about. (it's called: being "a know it all".)
free dixie,sw
There are other Watie's but not this individual.
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