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.
fyi, i have MANY friends in the north. they are decidedly NOT DAMNyankees.
if you got the PREJUDICED e-mails/PMs, that i often get, from some of the "wunnerful, wunnerful", but NASTY-mouthed DYs, you wouldn't find it hilarious. also the death threats aren't that really funny, either.
fwiw, one of the BANISHED DYs (who, i believe, has returned under s different screen-name) is REALLY "fond of" using "the N word". that in itself should tell you what sort of creature he is.
free dixie,sw
Wouldn’t know. I’d rather see a ‘clean’ Civil War thread, its a topic well worth seriously considering in world history, not just our national history.
There have never been two armies quite like them. And there never will be again.
you are 100% correct about the TWO armies. there hasn't been anything like them since.
the "Billy Yanks" fought , on the whole, BRAVELY & WELL. SADLY their "noble cause" was anything BUT proper/just/decent. they were UNknowingly fighting for the side of the OPPRESSORS.
the "good 'ole rebs", were ALSO decent/BRAVE/HONORABLE & they were fighting FOR liberty. when the "raggedy,gray-clad,barefooted,generally hungry WOLVES out of dixie" finally lost their war for independence, EVERYONE in the USA was a LOSER, as we ALL lost FREEDOM.
free dixie,sw
“the “Billy Yanks” fought , on the whole, BRAVELY & WELL’
They suffered from gross incompetence among the leadership.
Little Mac, Pope, Burnside, Fremont, Banks, McClernand, and then Hooker...a man dogged by history, but in fact he remains the only man to TWICE ‘steal a march’ on Marse Robert (Chancellorsville and in the opening days of the Pennsylvania campaign that ended at Gettysburg).
Great ‘what if’ with Chancellorsville. What if Hooker hadn’t been ‘stunned’? What if Sickles - a disagreeable man to say the least, was listened to during Stonewalls flanking march?
inasmuch as lincoln CHOSE war, rather than PEACE with the new dixie republic, it would be hard to do WORSE, when it comes to "the leadership".
it was "mr lincoln's war" from start to blood-soaked finish. a MILLION Americans needLESSly died for lincoln's lust for POWER, egomania & $$$$$$$.
and when the gunfire ended, we ALL lost. every one of us, both north & south.
free dixie,sw
I had hoped you might be interested in something other than beating up long dead Abe. Alas, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
No problem.
fyi, the yankee cavalry SLAUGHTERED 92 UNARMED, civilian,members of my family (mostly women & children under 10YO)and four of the five CSA soldiers out of my family, who were unfortunate enough to be captured,were MURDERED in cold-blood at Point Lookout DEATH Camp, just because they were "other than white persons".
free dixie,sw
I’m just not interested in that stuff. Its over and done.
Now, if you want to talk about the events during the war, specifically the military campaigns, ping me.
but this? Not interested.
Shouldn’t you be out observing “Stonewall Jackson Croaked Day” or something?
You’ll find Watie has a very limited repertoire.
Too each their own, as the saying goes. Better he vents here in the forum than to passersby on the street.
Thats cold...but I laughed anyway.
btw, are you in Fredricksburg? I toured it a few years ago with my wife, even purchased a CW era cannonball that sits on the desk in my ‘game room’. Couldn’t tell what battle it was related to,,,Fredricksburg, Chancellorsville, or The Wilderness.
Had a great time walking around, everybody was willing to talk with us about the town, the battles, etc.
That’s because you have a sense of humor. Something sadly lacking in the Southron supporters around here. The South must be a gloomy place.
For his own safety, maybe.
‘The South must be a gloomy place.’
I think you find ‘gloomy’ people everywhere. That said, my experiences ‘down south’ have all been great. I love visiting Savanah, or NOLA, or LA (lower Alabama). Texas is a blast whenever I get down that way, Georgia has great food and very entertaining women, I’ll travel to VA or NC or SC at the drop of a hat for the same reason. Tennessee has always been sweet, and you can always find a good time in Kentucky in my experience.
Maybe its because I live fifteen minutes north of the Ohio River here in Ohio, or the fact my property witnessed Morgan’s Raiders in July of 1863 riding through. But I do love the South, no denying it.
(chuckle)
Me? Live in the South? I have a sneaking suspicion that if I ever set foot south of the Mason-Dixon line again one of stand watie's Southron fanatics would sniff me out and have me wacked. No, I live in Kansas.
We had Robert Hodge speak at the local Civil War Round Table a couple of months back. He's a film maker and re-enactor (of the traitorous kind, though, because even though he was born and raised in Ohio he's been a self-confessed rebel supporter most of his life) and he spoke partly on the Civil War in cinema and partly on the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust. Seemed like a worthy cause so I bought some of his stuff, proceeds of which went to the CVBT.
For those who vaguely recognize the name, Hodge was the hard-core re-enactor that was the central figure in Tony Horowitz's "Confederates In The Attic".
(Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
Your tagline is why I asked. Thanks.
We had Ed Bearis (spelling) here recently giving a talk about the Civil War just prior to the annual ‘Grant Days’ in Georgetown Ohio. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend his lecture.
Every year in April we have a reenactment of Morgans Raiders taking over Georgetown, completely with forty - sixty cavalry running ‘hither and yon’ on the town square. Its one helluva production if you ever get over this way in the spring.
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