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.
I gave you warning that I'd post your messages if you persisted. You persisted. I posted. Too bad they embarrassed you.
my correspondents think you're a DUNCE & a TROLL,
Absent proof of their existence, your correspondents are widely considered figments of your imagination, just like the U-boat in the Galveston park.
So when are we going to hear from your friend who is going to explain why the historical marker in Alexandria is wrong?
I did see it, and I have no idea what channel your friend was watching but it wasn't the History Channel.
Not very surprising that Lincoln was admired by the two greatest tyrants in the history of the world - Marx and Hitler - is it?
He was also admired by great men like Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. Who the hell ever admired a POS like Jefferson Davis?
Sounds like you to me.
NOBODY that i know of thinks at this point that you're honest,sincere,honorable,well-meaning,decent and/or SMART.most seem just think you're a CREEP.
you should note that NOBODY (not even "Mr SPIN" the BIGOT or "ftd" the NITWIT), has "come running" to you defense.) they just think you're a TROLL, who has NOTHING of importance to say on FR & who is a DISGRACE to FR.
imVho, you are also PROBABLY "the BIGOT heyworthLESS" (i wish i could PROVE that you are him.), who was banned FOREVER for posting racist bilge, stupidity, hatefulness,KNOWING LIES,libel, nonsense & for his overall DIShonesty. fyi, "heyworthLESS" is missed by NOBODY, not even by the DYs.
free dixie,sw
in point of fact, your posts get LESS intelligent every day. PITY. (i used to think your posts were worthy of responding to.)
NOW i just laugh AT most of them as NEEDLESS blather, deceit (that wouldn't fool a 2YO) & outright nonsense.
free dixie,sw
On 1/29/07 you wrote to me:"fwiw, i could find out who you are in 10 minutes...i have lots of FReeper friends"
In Memory of the Gallant Southern Soldiers who died defending their Constitutional Rights!
And congratulations to the North for winning! Why doesn’t anybody ever give credit where credit is due. I think both sides had positives and negatives, but it seems that the North gives the credit to the South and the South NEVER recognizes that the North won...why is that???
actually, i personally know of NOT EVEN ONE person over the age of 10, who doesn't know that the unionists( i.e., lincoln, the TYRANT's, side), won the war.
as far as i know that is NOT & never has been the issue since 1865.
what IS at issue is:
1. the DISHONESTY of lincoln & his merry band of thugs (who were, imVho, PERSONALLY responsible for the needless DEATH of a MILLION Americans),
2.whether lincoln deserves to be remembered as a TYRANT/WAR CRIMINAL or as a POTUS, and
3. what , if anything, should be done to remember the deeds of the heroes/martyrs of BOTH sides (which has not already been done), including the remembrance of the THOUSANDS of:
a. slaughtered, innocent dixie civilians &
b.countless THOUSANDS of CSA prisoners, who "mysteriously disappeared", while in federal captivity.
free dixie,sw
My word, haven’t seen the papers lately? THE WAR IS OVER. WE WON!!!
And yet here you are, responding again, saying nothing of value. I've lost count of the number of times you've been caught in another barefaced lie, and can't recall a single time you were factually correct.
I realize that the North won, but other than ending slavery, I see zero positives to that victory.
Let’s examine some of the outcomes:
1. Government of the STATES, (Each state being a sovereign entity, etc.) GONE, and replaced with a centralized, all-powerful Federal Government.
2. The South being so devestated, that it took 130 years or so to recover.
3. The flower of youth of BOTH sides gone.
4. Un-Ending emnity between races, and even sectional in some cases.
Just to name four.............
Second, if you do your novel about Davis and his wife be sure to include the estrangement between the two that dated from the mid-1860s and lasted until his death.
AB, have you ever used the Find a Grave web site? Surprisng how many burials they have documented, and almost a sure bet that anyone will find at least one ancestor grave photo there. Pretty neat stuff. I think I will share it when I teach my genealogy class tonight.
free dixie,sw
PITY that you've finally "gone off the deep end" & have bypassed/lost your hold on REALITY.
otoh, you COULD (i guess) be "playing to your public", as the members of "The DAMNyankee coven of useful idiots, creeps,lunatics, fools, bigots & at least ONE racist" are without exception:
ignorant, mostly UNeducated,SELF-righteous,filled with HATE & PREJUDICE, sanctimonious & just plain DUMB.
free dixie,sw
Find a grave is pretty amazing, I’ve used it a lot. Found my great grandmothers grave that way actually.
You teach a genealogy class? How exciting! I’m so hooked, it can be an obsession. :<)
Indeed, I did. In fact, I’ve read several of your posts on this thread. And as one damn-fool, self-righteous, proud YANKEE, to one fascinating JOHNNY REB, I’d like to welcome you to 2007. The last several years have provided us with quite a lesson. We saved the Union once, and you crazy Rebs are trying to save it now in a much subtler fashion. Best of luck to you, never thought I’d be thanking the south for anything, but here we are.
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