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.
No more legal reason than then US had by invading Cuba.
I will give up. (when I’m dead. :)
Indeed. Another Southerner to save the day. :)
my point is that you are EITHER a TROLL, who should NOT be believed on ANY subject and/OR you are as UNknowing/ignorant of the WBTS period as the members of "The STUPID Club" are.
the club is a subset of the "DAMNyankee coven of nitwits, lunatics, BIGOTS, haters, useful idiots, REVISIONISTS & at least one RACIST". "Mr SPIN", the FOOL/HATER/NITWIT is this year's President of FOOLS, nitwits, useful idiots & BIGOTS.
free dixie,sw
Obviously they should have been.
Yes, but oh well....
I'll look forward to it. Then we can forward the information to the Alexandria synagogue and let them know that you've determined that they don't know their own history as well as you do.
my point is that you are EITHER a TROLL, who should NOT be believed on ANY subject...
Hey, I'm the one who posted a picture of the actual historical marker in Alexandria. I've brought independent evidence to the discussion. You've just blustered and bullied and made assertions backed with nothing more than "so-and-so told me so."
in point of fact, TROLL, you are NOT believed by anyone BUT the DUMB-bunnies on these threads. period. end of story.
i suspect, but do NOT know that you are "heyworthLESS, the HATER/FOOL/BIGOT" in another guise. i do NOT think that it is a coincidence that you appeared at the almost the same time that he was banished FOREVER for being a BIGOT/HATER/DUNCE. further, you have most of the same sympathies/syntax/opinions that "heyworthLESS" had. QED, you ARE "the banished BIGOT".
free dixie,sw
What pretzel twisting? You claimed that the United States Army troops burned down the synagogue in Alexandria when they occupied the city, and that it was "the oldest synagogue in dixie." I simply posted evidence that there were older synagogues in the south than any in Alexandria, and that according to the historical marker in Alexandria, the first synagogue there wasn't built until after the war. No pretzel twisting involved. The pretzel twisting is you trying to figure out how to divert attention from being nailed in another fabrication. We'll wait for your friend the expert to appear. In the meantime, can we contact your "Miss Grey" in Tahlequah and find out why every source that says Stand Watie owned slaves is wrong?
Was that Miss Grey, in Tahlequah, with the documentation, or was it Col. Mustard, in the 7th Cavalry, with the candlestick? Maybe my impeccable source, Professor Plum, knows.
your reputation precedes you. fyi, it is NOT a good one, as MOST here think you are a KNOWING liar, a TROLL or a FOOL. i vote for TROLL.
free dixie,sw
several members of the Watie family DID own slaves in GA & in IT. perhaps that's what you are confusing. otoh, you COULD be KNOWINGLY deceiving your readers. DECEIT is part of your reputation, too.
free dixie,sw
So, basically once again you’re asking us to believe that the hundreds of sources that say the real Stand Watie owned slaves are wrong, and that we should believe what you say without any corroboration. Is that right?
thus EVERYTHING you post is (at BEST) suspect, absent INDEPENDENT PROOF from a TRUSTED SOURCE. at worst most here consider you a KNOWING deceiver & your "word of honor", a JOKE.
free dixie,sw
your "word of honor", a JOKE.
See, I don't think I've ever asked anyone to accept anything I say on my "word of honor." I post evidence and give links for other people to go see them for themselves. You're the one asking for people to accept you at your word, and you've been busted for lying so many times that you have no credibility at all. Shall we recap, starting with the captured U-Boat?
as for the "u-boat" situation, as you are WEEL aware, i was quoting an AUTHOR. i said from the first that i had NO independent knowledge of the incident.
fyi, this is just ANOTHER in your LONG list of DECEPTIONS, which you have TRIED to sell to the UNwary.
your REPUTATION is "mixed" at BEST & actually tilts toward the INTENTIONALLY dishonest.
therefore, nobody is fooled by your excuses.
PITY that you are still here "heyworthLESS"/TROLL.
free dixie,sw
So you claim. You've never shown any evidence to that effect.
From the DAR website
For other generations back to the Patriot, one or more of the following items would usually be considered acceptable proof: cemetery records, tombstone inscriptions, obituaries, probate records, wills, census records, Bible records, local histories, and well-documented genealogies.
as for the "u-boat" situation, as you are WEEL aware, i was quoting an AUTHOR. i said from the first that i had NO independent knowledge of the incident.
Do you want me to put up your original posts again? You made no such caveat about the author until you realized that no amount of bluster was going to put a U-boat in a Galveston park and you had to back away from your absurd claims. And of course there's the fact that no one has ever been able to find a trace of such a book existing in any library, any bibliography, or any bookseller.
From the SCV website:
"Our Professional Genealogy Research Service is a modest fee of $25 which pays for our time, a report on what we find, and up to 3 electronic copies of Census records or other public documents which show your lineage."
"Study the example above, and learn how to use the 1850 and 1860 Census Indices and the 1880 and 1900 Soundex Records, and you will be able to build a family tree that includes men who fought for the preservation of the Constitution."
the FACT is that hardly anyone on FR believes anything you post, as your reputation is that of a TROLL/DECEIVER. thus it makes no difference WHAT you post, as you will be believed by (almost) nobody. (exceptions are for the members of "THE STUPID CLUB", a subset of "The DAMNyankee Coven of lunatics, idiots, HATERS, fools, BIGOTS & at least one RACIST".)
have you noticed that only 3 ("ftd", "Mr SPIN" & "sw") people on FR will post TO you???? the reason is that they do NOT wish to "dirty their hands" by associating with you.
as i told you MONTHS ago,one NICE lady of the forum said that she was "disappointed in you" (speaking of me) "that you would lower yourself by posting to Bubba HoTep".
btw, ONE of your "missteps" that cost you any respect, which you might otherwise have had, was when you VIOLATED the protocols of the forum by posting PRIVATE MESSAGES of a FReeper "on forum", without the consent of the sender (me). fyi, you "ruined yourself" with that ONE act alone. since then, NOTHING you've done has improved your reputation. of course your reputation at that time was UNSAVORY, at best; thus you couldn't make your reputation much WORSE, in most people's minds.
free dixie,sw
"to get yourseld out of a hole, first stop digging." = you might think on that.
the TRUTH is that NOTHING you post (to me or almost anyone else)is believed.
frankly, i don't care what your opinion is.
free dixie,sw
So, what does your little bird tell you these days?
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