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.
Of course you don't. But you can't show anything to show that they didn't.
fyi, that is NOT (as YOU are WELL aware) a PRIMARY source.
Your hyperactive imagination does not count as a primary source.
Did you check Arkansas or Texas census? During this time, the Waties were in Arkansas 1854 and a few years longer. They also went to Texas where other relatives had a settlement. They were on the move to avoid assassination by Ross contingents.
laughing AT you, PROPAGANDIST! (i've noted recently that you are not up to your usual ability to respond to questions. are you DRINKING???)
free dixie,sw
as usual, you're trying DESPERATELY to deceive your readers, but EVERYONE is "onto your game".
that's why you are laughed AT & RIDICULED as a "none too bright" LIAR!
laughing AT you, TROLL.
free dixie,sw
And when have you ever provided any PROOF whatever for your IDIOTIC contentions? From the South ending slavery in 7 year post rebellion to Stand Watie being some sort of poverty stricken slob to, well, to anything at all? You spout the most outrageous nonsense, offer absolutely nothing to support your stupid claims, and then have the audacity to criticize others. I no longer laugh at you, I truly pity your delusional rants and raves.
'ole pal, based on YEARS of "dealing with you", you're LOSING IT! whatever you're drinking must be STRONG.
fyi, your responses USED to be at least SMART, though WRONG. now they're just DUMB & PITIFUL.(could it be that you've figured out that you basic premises are fatally FLAWED???)
free dixie,sw
Post 666. Somehow very appropriate.
it's NOT too uncommon for southrons to consider the DYs to be IN "the belly of THE BEAST"!
free dixie,sw
Don't worry. A HATE-filled/BIGOTED/empty-HEADED/arrogant pserson did.
LOL!
If it is a direct, verbatim quotation of the actual person's writings, which were written by an involved person contemporaneously with the question under discussion, it is a primary source. Diaries, letters from participants, court testimony, census records - any first person account is a primary source. "On Tuesday, Johnny shot at me."
A secondary source would be a non witness recounting, such as a newspaper story, or someone relating something not personally participated in. For example, a footnoted text. "Last Tuesday, it was reported by Joe Doe that John Smith shot at him."
A tertiary source would be someone claiming that a second person told them about something the second person ALSO didn't have first hand knowledge of, all without primary documentation. "My friend, Miss Grey, said that she read that John Smith once shot at Joe Doe."
Just watched History Channels, Sherman’s March. Any comments? I thought a much better effort should have been made. I loath the rehashing of what was said earlier, after a commercial break. Time that could have been spent in better detail.
I agree a better job could have been done. I watched the first half and fell asleep during the second. Nothing new from what I recall seeing.
free dixie,sw
So now you believe that your freepmails to me were "confidences"?
NO??? i thought NOT, as you are BOTH a DUNCE & a little, HATE-filled, ignorant, TROLL.
as i've said, you RUINED yourself to most people on FR & "shot yourself in the foot".
PITY, that you're too clueLESS to KNOW that you're "toast".
laughing AT you, empty-headed TROLL!!!
free dixie,sw
Did you not understand the words "By the way, if you want to communicate these sorts of threats, have the courage to do it in the public forum where everyone can see it. If it happens again, I’ll post all your messages to me onto the boards."
Didn’t get to see it, but a friend at work told me about it this AM.
He said - AMAZINGLY - that the History Channel told about how Sherman basically MASS MURDERED the blacks who tried to follow him out of Savannah; and what an incredible racist Sherman was.
I knew that Sherman ALLOWED the blacks to drown in the Savannah. I didn’t know that he actually had the bridge cut, CAUSING them to drown.
Sherman was a war criminal, just like his boss.
Both men show have hung for their war crimes.
Not very surprising that Lincoln was admired by the two greatest tyrants in the history of the world - Marx and Hitler - is it?
still, every time you "violate private communications" (you DO understand the meaning of "PRIVATE MESSAGE", don't you, TROLL???)you HURT yourself WORSE. otoh, you probably CANNOT look WORSE than you already do in the eyes of FReepers.
my correspondents think you're a DUNCE & a TROLL, just as i do.PITY that you don't "get it".
laughing AT you,DUNCE/HATER/ TROLL.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
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