duced, but leave the council of war to the discre- CHAP. IX. tion of myself. The conclusions' of that report I consider would be to order troops from Fort Moultrie and Sullivan's Island and Pinckney, and so abandon the attempt to keep out reënforcements, and, in fact, to yield without a struggle every point, and thus break down the spirit of our peo- dorsement, ple, and cover our cause with imbecility and probable ruin. I shall do no such thing, nor shall I yield to any council of war that may drive me to such 1861, p. 180. 'conclusions."" Such was the self-confessed weakness of the conspiracy at this juncture, which a few months later grew to a continental war. A single armed ship and five hundred recruits, backed by a Presidential will, would manifestly have seriously crippled and might perhaps have effectually crushed this local insurrection. Major Anderson had not failed to report the movement of the insurgents to construct the battery on Morris Island. "Several steamers have been running to and fro," he wrote, "and this afternoon about eighty soldiers with wheelbarrows, barrels, etc., and some draught horses were landed on Morris Island. They are evidently constructing a battery or batteries there. The lights in the harbor were put out last night." But under the President's conciliation policy he did not feel himself at liberty to interfere with these offensive preparations. Pushed ahead by the unresting will of Governor Pickens, built by the superabundant supply of slave labor, and superintended by the bookish science of Major Stevens and his forty boyish Citadel Academy cadets, this battery was Pickens, In Jan. 3, 1861. Journal," Anderson to Adju tant-GenDec. eral, 31, 1860. W. R. Vol. I., p. 120. CHAP. IX. able, on January 9, to give the Star of the West the warm reception she encountered and to thwart the expedition of relief. That the insurgent victory was due rather to accident than to juvenile gunnery mattered little to the jubilant conspirators. The daring of Governor Pickens was justified, the spirit of the people was roused, the opening campaign a success, and the cause generally enveloped in a halo of cheap glory. If a detachment of boys could work this wonder in nine days, might not a united and continued effort capture Sumter? No doubt reasoning of this kind dictated Governor Pickens's defiant reply to Anderson; but it also did more. The Star of the West had scarcely shown her heels to the Citadel Academy cadets, when the Governor sat down and wrote the following order to his best three engineer officers: "You are ordered to come together immediately, and consider and report the most favorable plan for operating upon Fort Sumter, so as to reduce that fortress, by batteries or other means in our possession; and for this consultation you are authorized to have with you Colonel 1861, p. 208. Manigault, the State ordnance officer." Pickens to Col. Col. White, and Col. Trapier, Jan. 9, 1861. "South Carolina House Journal," The engineer board entered with alacrity into the Governor's views, and on the following day (January 10, 1861) presented him their report, and submitted a plan which they pronounced feasible. The details of that plan with its mortar batteries on Sullivan's Island, at Fort Johnson, at Cummings Point; its heavy gun batteries on Moultrie; the blocking of all entrances to the harbor except Maffitt's channel, and the protection of that entrance by a heavy gun battery, so as to secure as a final and crowning agency "the slow (but sure) process CHAP. IX. of starvation," have but little interest for the general reader. It is enough that they considered the plan effective. "We are unanimously and decidedly of the opinion that-discarding all other methods of attack upon that fortress (whether by surprise, by open assault, or by stratagem) as uncertain in their results, and as, even if successful, involving probably much sacrifice of life-our dependence and sole reliance must be upon batteries of heavy ordnance, at least until a deep impression has been made upon the garrison, in its morale as well as in its physique, by an incessant bombardment and cannonade of many hours' duration. When this impression shall have been made, and a demand for a surrender refused, we are of opinion that, with its battlements mutilated, its embrasures beaten in, and its garrison weakened by casualties and disheartened by surrounding circumstances, Journal," this strong fortress would fall, with comparative ease, before an assaulting party." Engineers' Report, Jan. 10, 1861. "South Carolina House 1861, pp. 182, 183. Pickens, Message. "South Carolina House 1861, pp. 32, 33. There can be no doubt that the Governor was highly pleased with the report. In the following autumn, he had the perhaps pardonable vanity to inform the Legislature, in an opening message, that his order originated it, and that "upon that plan Journal," the batteries were erected which finally did reduce" Sumter. If any doubt arose in his own mind as to the efficacy of this plan it sprung from the question of a single but vital element of success-time. These batteries, these heavy guns, these ponderous mortars, these immense stores of shot and shell, could not be called up by a magician's wand. This patient drill, this long cannonade, and perhaps CHAP. IX. this tedious process of starvation-would nothing occur during its slow lapse? At the opportune moment, the very day following this report, came, as the result of the Magrath and Jamison mission to the fort, already recited in the last chapter, the proposal of the commandant "to refer this matter to Washington." In full view of the military situation as Governor Pickens then clearly understood it, and the need of time to perfect arrangements, it is no wonder he eagerly accepted Major Anderson's truce, or that in ten days from that time both the major and Captain Foster reported to the War Department the blocking of the main ship channel by hulks, the erection of extensive batteries, the increased energy and superior work of the insurgents, and, in short, the practical isolation and siege of Fort Sumter.1 1 Anderson to Holt, Jan. 21, 1861. W. R. Vol. I., p. 143. Foster to Totten, Jan. 14, 1861. W. R. Vol. I., pp. 138, 139; also Jan. 21, 1861. Ibid., pp. 146-48. CHAPTER X THE NATIONAL DEFENSE TH HE conspirators had good reason to sound the note of alarm and show symptoms of dismay at the beginning of the Cabinet régime on December 31, 1860. Henceforth the sway they had exercised over President Buchanan would be to a great extent lost to them. Hitherto, not alone in shaping a policy of non-coercion, and preventing reënforcements, but in numerous minor matters as well, the complicity of Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson had enabled them to turn the varied agencies of the Government against its own life; while active caucuses to inaugurate rebellion had been going on in at least three of the executive departments at Washington. Floyd, especially, lost no opportunity to favor the conspirators. He sold the Virginia Board of Army Commissioners 5000 muskets; delivered 10,000 others from the Watervliet arsenal, New York, to an agent of South Carolina; and still 5000 others from the Baton Rouge arsenal to the Governor of Alabama. He ordered advanced quotas of arms to a number of Southern States. He sent a Government inspector to inspect a purchase of arms for the Governor of Mississippi. He СНАР. Х. |