time open my fire upon your forces unless compelled to do so by some hostile act against this fort or the flag of my Government, by the forces under your command or by some portion of them, or by the perpetration of some act showing a hostile intention on your part against this fort or the flag it bears.*

This cautious and resolute answer was not what the rebel commander desired; but apparently he expected nothing else, for he had given his aides discretionary authority to refuse the stipulation. They retired to an adjoining room to consult and compose their answer, and at twenty minutes past three o'clock on the morning of Friday, April 12, 1861, handed Anderson their written notice that the rebel batteries would open their fire upon the fort in one hour. Then taking their leave, they entered their boat and proceeded directly to Fort Johnson, and gave to the officer commanding that post "the order to open fire at

the time indicated."†

Unwelcome as was the prospect of the impending conflict, it must in one sense have been a relief as a contrast to the uncertainty in which the fate of the garrison had hung for more than three months. The decisive moment of action was at last reached, and the spirit and strength of every inmate of the fort leaped into new life under the supreme impulse of combat. Until the full dawning of the morning, nothing could be done within the fort. Anderson gave the necessary orders about the coming attack. The sentinels were all withdrawn from their exposed stations on the parapet; every gate and opening was closed; the men were strictly enjoined not to leave the shelter of the casemates except on special summons. These few preparations hastily completed, Sumter seemed to the outside world to have relapsed into the security and silence of a peaceful sleep.

-

The fort had been built on an artificial island midway in the mouth of Charleston harbor; it was three miles from the city, but projecting points of the neighboring islands inclosed it in a triangle. On these the rebels had built their siege works to the north-east Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island, distant 1800 yards; to the south, the Cumming's Point batteries on Morris Island, distant 1300 yards; to the west, Fort Johnson on James Island, distant 2500 yards. Some were built merely to oppose the expected reënforcements through the harbor channels; most of them were earth-works. Two were constructed of wood and protected with railroad iron; one of these had been designed to serve as a floating battery, but proving a

Anderson to Beauregard, April 12, 1861, 2.30 A. M. Victor, "Southern Rebellion."

Chesnut and Lee to Jones, April 12, 1861. War

Records.

F. J. Porter, Inspection Report. War Records.

failure in this object, was now advantageously grounded behind a protecting sea-wall. Altogether there were from fourteen to nineteen of these batteries, mounting a total of thirty guns and seventeen mortars, manned and supported by a volunteer force of four to six thousand men. The greater part of them were holiday soldiers, but among their officers were a dozen or two formerly belonging to the Federal army and possessed of a thorough military education. To these the management of the enterprise was mainly confided.

Fort Sumter, on its part, was a scarcely completed work, dating back to the period of smooth-bore guns of small caliber; its walls were of brick, forty feet high and eight feet thick; it was pierced for one hundred and forty guns, to be mounted in two tiers of casemates and on the parapet. But when Anderson inspected it on his arrival in November previous, the brick-work of walls and casemates was still unfinished, and only a few guns were mounted. Foster, the engineer in charge, had, with limited help and materials, and in the face of constant obstacles and discouragements, pushed the work towards completion. There was now a total of forty-eight guns mounted and ready for use, though furnished with very rude and insufficient appliances. Of these, twenty-one were in the casemates and twenty-seven on the parapet. To man and support them Anderson had a garrison of nine commissioned officers, sixty-eight noncommissioned officers and privates, eight musicians, and forty-three non-combatant laborers

a total of one hundred and twenty-eight souls. We shall see that while the opposing artillery was nearly equal in number, there existed, in fact, a great disparity in its quality. Not only was Anderson's fire diffused and that of the enemy concentrated, but the rebels had on their side seventeen ten-inch mortars, which could deliver a vertical fire and drop large shells into the fort; while Anderson had nothing to answer them but the horizontal fire of his guns to throw missiles against the face of the rebel bomb-proofs, formed of heavy sandbanks or sloping railroad iron.

The inhabitants of Charleston were informed of the intended bombardment; months of speech-making, drilling, and war preparation had excited an intense eagerness to witness the fight. In the yet prevailing darkness they came pouring out of their houses by a common impulse, and thronged to the wharves and buildings on the bay, where they sought advantageous positions to behold the longwished-for spectacle. At about half-past four, as the dim outline of Fort Sumter began to define itself in the morning twilight, they saw

a shell rise from the mortar batteries near Fort

Johnson, and make its slow and graceful curve upon Sumter. This was the signal. Gun after gun and battery after battery responded to its summons, and in less than an hour all the besieging works were engaged in an active cannonade.

Inside of Sumter the garrison received the assault with a certain degree of deliberation. The first care was to note the effect of the firing. The opening shots of the rebels were badly aimed, and fell wide of the mark. With the advancing daylight their gunners obtained a better range; the solid shot began to strike the face of the wall, and the shells from the mortars to explode with alarming precision over the parapet. Nevertheless, no great or rapid damage was done. One vital point was, however, quickly decided. Housed in the casemates, the garrison was comparatively safe; but out on the unprotected parapet, under the concentrated fire of all the rebel artillery, Anderson's little handful of cannoneers would melt away like frost in the morning sun. With a full war garrison he could have replaced officers and men as they were shot down; but with only sufficient trained force to work nine guns, he dared not risk the loss of a single man. His first reluctant duty, therefore, was to order the abandonment of all his barbette guns. These were twenty-seven in number, more than half his available armament, and comprising nearly all his pieces of large caliber. Through this necessity alone, Fort Sumter was largely shorn of its offensive power. His twenty-one casemate guns, of which only four were forty-two pounders, and the remainder thirty-twos, constituted the total of his fighting artillery.

The rations of bread having been exhausted a day or two before, the command breakfasted on pork and water, and at about 7 o'clock Captain Abner Doubleday, the ranking officer, took his station at a casemate gun and hurled the defiance of Sumter, with a solid shot, against the formidable iron-clad battery on Cumming's Point. Fully roused by the combined excitements of resentment and danger, the men sprang with alacrity to their duty; even the forty-three engineer workmen, forgetting their character of non-combatants, eagerly volunteered and rendered active service in the defense. In fact, the enthusiasm of the garrison somewhat outstripped its prudence. They began the engagement with a supply of only seven hundred cartridges; by the middle of the day this stock had become so much reduced that the fort was compelled to slacken its fire. From this time on only six guns were kept in action-two towards Morris Island, two towards Fort Moultrie, and two towards the batteries on the west end of Sulli

van's Island. These were also fired at longer intervals, while the only six needles in the fort were kept busy sewing up cartridge-bags out of the extra clothing, blankets, hospital sheets, and even coarse paper.

So the unequal combat went on throughout the first day. The journal of the bombardment kept by Captain Foster shows that no very decisive damage was effected on either side. From the fort there were occasional good shots. The iron-clad batteries were repeatedly struck, but the light balls bounded off their sloping roofs. At other batteries they buried themselves harmlessly in the impervious rebel sand-banks. Embrasures were struck; groups of rebel officers and men allowing their curiosity to draw them out from their shelter were hustled pell-mell back into their bomb-proofs; an incautious schooner, receiving a ball, hauled down her Confederate flag and hurried out of range; the two forty-two pounders bearing on Moultrie silenced a gun, riddled the barracks and quarters, and tore three holes through the rebel flag.

The effect of the enemy's fire upon Fort Sumter [says Foster] during the day was very marked in respect to the vertical fire. This was so well directed, and so well sustained, that from the seventeen mortars engaged in firing ten-inch shells one-half of the shells came within or exploded above the parapet of the fort, and only about ten buried themselves in the soft earth of the parade without exploding. . . . The effect of the direct fire from the enemy's guns was not so marked as the vertical. For several hours' firing from the comfort. Subsequently it improved, and did considerable mencement, a large proportion of their shot missed the damage to the roof and upper story of the barracks and quarters, and to the tops of the chimneys on the gorge. The shots from the guns in the batteries on the west end of Sullivan's Island did not produce any considerable direct effect, but many of them took the gorge in reverse in their fall, completely riddling the officers' quarters, even down to the first story, so great was the angle of fall of many of the balls.

One additional danger manifested itself: three times during the day the wooden buildings in the fort caught fire, but were extinguished without great difficulty, being low and easily accessible. The rebel batteries, provided with several furnaces, now and then fired a hot shot; but whether these or bursting shells started the burning the officers themselves could not determine. The very work of ruin going on in the building used as officers' quarters aided in restraining the flames. The hallways were provided with iron water-tanks, which, being soon perforated by cannon-balls, deluged the chambers, and rendered the wood difficult to ignite.

Amid experience of this kind the eventful 12th of April, the first day of the Sumter bombardment, at length drew to a close. The fire of Sumter ceased; the direct fire of the

rebel batteries slackened, and was finally discontinued; only the mortars kept up a slow and sullen bombardment through the night at intervals of from ten to fifteen minutes. The work of sewing up cartridge-bags was continued until midnight; sentinels and lookouts were stationed to watch for the possible coming of boats from the fleet-possibly of boats bearing a storming party from the rebel camps. But the night proved dark and rainy, with a continuance of the prevailing gale, making the waters of the harbor too rough for either of these undertakings. Under cover of the thick gloom, Foster, the engineer, ventured outside the walls and satisfied himself "by personal inspection that the exterior of the work was not damaged to any considerable extent, and that all the facilities for taking in supplies in case they arrived were as complete as circumstances would admit."* Three United States men-of-war had been seen off the bar during the afternoon, and the fort had dipped its flag in signal to them. What was the fleet doing?

The several vessels of the Fox expedition were scarcely at sea when they encountered a driving gale. Captain Fox himself, who sailed in the Baltic on the morning of the 9th, was yet ignorant of the changed destination of the flag-ship Powhatan. This was doubtless an entirely unintentional omission, arising through the cares, the dangers, the confusion, the cross-purposes, the system of profound secrecy which for a few days prevailed at Washington. The Baltic reached the rendezvous off Charleston just in time to hear the opening guns of the bombardment. The Harriet Lane was already there. The Pawnee arrived at daylight. There was an apparent conflict of orders, and a hesitation to coöperate. The Baltic and the Harriet Lane stood in to offer to carry provisions to the fort; but as they neared the bar of the harbor, they saw by the quick-flashing rebel guns that the war was already begun. At this intelligence, the commander of the Pawnee declared his intention to go in and "share the fate of his brethren of the army." Fox, cool and practical, brought him back to reason by explaining the Government instructions, and induced him to await the chance of rendering more effective service. The two ships of war anchored near the bar, and the Baltic stood off and on to await the arrival of the Powhatan and the tugs. This, however, was a vain hope. The Powhatan was on her way to Pensacola, the tugs had been scattered by the storm. The Freeborn was not permitted to leave New York. The Uncle Ben was driven into Wilmington and fell into the hands of the rebels. The Yankee failed to * Foster, journal, April 12, 1861. War Records.

reach the rendezvous till long after the whole affair was over. But, still ignorant of these disasters, and hoping hourly for the arrival of the missing vessels, the fleet waited and made signals all the long afternoon and through the dark and stormy night, while the lookouts in the garrison were anxiously scanning the turbulent waters of the bay for the coming of the boats, and the rebel gunners stood by their channel batteries in the drenching rain hoping to intercept and sink them.

Captain Fox and the officers of the fleet were sorely disappointed at the non-arrival of the Powhatan and the tugs. The former had on board the armed launches and the necessary sailors to man them; the tugs were to have carried the supplies and perhaps drawn the boats in tow. With these facilities for transportation, there is every probability that they would have reached the fort. The storm was both an advantage and a hindrance; it increased the friendly darkness to hide them from the rebel gunners, but at the same time it lashed the waters of the bay into fury. When morning came, such had been the pitchy gloom of the night and the roaring of the rain and the surf, that the commanders of the rebel batteries were unable to report that their watch and guard had been completely effective. "Opinions differ," wrote one of their best officers, "as to whether anything got into Sumter last night. They may or may not. The night was dark and occasionally stormy, and a heavy sea running. If anything did, it could not have been very extensive."t

With the morning of the 13th, Captain Fox and the officers began to despair of the Powhatan and the tugs. Unwilling to remain mere idle spectators of the fight, they cast about to use such expedients as presented themselves. Among the merchant vessels by this time collected at the bar, awaiting the issue of the contest, was an ice schooner; this they impressed and began to prepare for an attempt to enter the following night. There were plenty of volunteers among both officers and seamen for the hazardous duty; but long before nightfall the bombardment had come to an end. That Captain Fox's undertaking thus terminated without direct practical result was not his fault. With characteristic firmness and generosity, President Lincoln took upon himself the principal blame for its failure.

The practicability of your plan [so he wrote to Fox soon afterward] was not in fact brought to a test. By reason of a gale well known in advance to be possible and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground; while, by an accident bly I to some extent was, you were deprived of a warfor which you were in nowise responsible, and possivessel, with her men, which you deemed of great im+ Whiting to Beauregard, April 13, 1861. MS.

"Fort Sumter opened early and spitefully, and paid especial attention to Fort Moultrie almost every shot grazing the crest of the parapet, and crashing through the quarters." This was the rebel report of the beginning of the second day's bombardment, April 13. The garrison of Sumter was refreshed by a night of comparatively secure rest in their casemates, and, no doubt, a hearty breakfast of pork and water, and, so long as the stock of cartridges made up during the night held out, they kept up so brisk a fire from their few guns that the rebels began to be confirmed in the opinion that the fort had really been reënforced. On their side the besiegers also increased both the speed of firing and their accuracy of aim, and seeing that they were making no headway in the test of breaching the walls, they began to pay more attention to the use of red-hot shot.‡

Thus far this unequal contest of nearly fifty concentrating guns, replied to by about six, had gone on without material damage to either party showing, in proportion to the strength of each, nothing but indented brick walls or displaced sand-bags, battered chimneys and perforated barracks, a few slight contusions from splinters, and one or two disabled guns. According to all the reports, it might have proceeded at this rate the whole week, and the waste of ammunition would have been its most serious feature. But at this stage a new element entered into the strife, and soon turned the fortune of the day against the unlucky garrison of Sumter.

At about 9 o'clock in the morning, the roof of the officers' quarters once more caught fire, either from a bursting shell or a red-hot shot; and this time a distance from water, and the exposure to the enemy's missiles, made it impossible to extinguish the flames. Worse than all, it quickly became evident that the fire would soon encircle the magazine and make it imperative to close it. At Captain Foster's suggestion, all hands not employed at the guns now sprang to the work of taking out a supply of powder. About fifty barrels were thus secured, distributed for safety in the various casemates, and covered with wet blankets, when the fire and heat so far increased that it was necessary to close the heavy metal doors of the magazine and bank it up with earth. The enemy, observing the smoke, redoubled the fire of the batteries; a strong * Lincoln to Fox, May 1, 1861.

f Ripley, Report, April 16, 1861. War Records.

south wind carried the flame to all the barracks inside the fort; and though the men fought the advance of the fire, they were at length compelled to give way and take refuge in the casemates. Even here they were not safe; the course of the wind was such as to fill every nook and corner of the fort with blinding, stifling smoke; the men crouched close down to the floors, covered their faces with wet handkerchiefs, or took exposed stations near the embrasures to obtain a breath of fresh air. As if this were not enough, a still subtler danger pursued them. The rapid conflagration and sweeping wind had filled the air with fire-flakes, and these drifted on the strong currents and counter-currents into the casemates to such an extent as to ignite the beds, boxes, and various small articles hastily collected there. Under such circumstances the fifty barrels of powder saved with so much exertion from the magazine could no longer be kept, and upon Anderson's order all but five barrels were thrown through the embrasures of the fort into the sea. Noon had meanwhile come, and, engaged in these pressing occupa tions, the garrison had ceased firing. By-andby the wind changed a little, rendering the situation somewhat safer and more comfortable. There were but few cartridges left; still an occasional shot was fired, which the rebels themselves, roused to admiration of the garrison, received with cheers.

A new incident now engaged general attention. The flag-staff of the fort, struck seven different times during the first day and three the second, fell at about one o'clock in the afternoon. Lieutenant Snyder and a couple of men, without much delay, again hoisted the flag on a jury-mast extemporized on the parapet. The rebels had meanwhile noted the fall of the flag, and sent several different communications to Sumter. The first messenger was the ubiquitous and eccentric Senator Wigfall. Beauregard, to get rid of him, sent him as an aide to the commander of Morris Island. From there, after a short consultation among the rebel officers, he was dispatched to Fort Sumter to make inquiries. He crossed the bay dramatically in an open boat, with his handkerchief tied to his sword for a flag of truce, and clambered up the wall to an accessible embrasure, where, one account says, an astonished artilleryman, seeing this unique apparition, summarily made him a prisoner of war. §

Officers soon came, however, and after a somewhat spirited dialogue, and some further waving of Wigfall's sword and handkerchief out of an embrasure, to which the rebel batteries paid no attention, he was brought into f Foster, journal, April 13, 1861. War Records. $ Doubleday, “Forts Sumter and Moultrie."

Anderson's presence. He made a complimentary speech to Anderson, requesting that hostilities might be suspended and terms of evacuation arranged. What then occurred Captain Foster reports as follows:

The commanding officer desiring to know what terms he came to offer, Mr. Wigfall replied, "Any terms that you may desire,-your own terms, the precise nature of which General Beauregard will arrange with you." The commanding officer then accepted the conditions, saying that the terms he accepted were those proposed by General Beauregard on the 11th, namely: to evacuate the fort with his command, taking arms and all private and company property, saluting the United States flag as it was lowered, and being conveyed, if he desired it, to any Northern port. With this understanding Mr. Wigfall left, and the white flag was raised and the United States flag lowered by order of the commanding officer. The officious Wigfall had not been gone a great while when two different messages arrived at Sumter from General Beauregard the first to inquire whether Anderson needed assistance, and the second to tender him the use of a fire-engine and the services of a surgeon, both of which they had brought from the city. All of these Anderson declined with thanks, saying he had no wounded, that the fire was by this time nearly burned out, and that he thought the magazine safe. From these interviews Anderson now learned that Beauregard was entirely ignorant of Wigfall's mission or his own capitulation. He explained the circumstances, and threatened to hoist again his flag. He was persuaded, however, first to submit the matter to be fully reported at headquarters. General Beauregard, after some parley, ratified Wigfall's unauthorized proceeding and accepted Anderson's terms in detail. By eight o'clock on Saturday evening the capitulation was definitely arranged, and on the following day, Sunday, April 14, Anderson and his command sailed northward in the Baltic, which had come to the relief of Sumter. In a military point of view, Anderson's capitulation was hasty. The defense of the fort can hardly be called heroic; there was not a man killed, not a casemate gun disabled, not a breach in the walls, plenty of ammunition in the magazine, and starvation not immediately impending.

The burning of the quarters [says Captain Foster] produced a great effect on the defense while the fire lasted, inasmuch as the heat and smoke were almost stifling, and as the fire burned all around the magazines, obliging them to be closed, and thus preventing our getting powder to continue the firing. It also destroyed the main gates and the gun-carriages on the

The opinion of the rebel engineer, after the bombardment, agrees with that of Captain Foster. Major Whiting wrote as follows to Beauregard, on the 17th of April, proposing to abandon Morris Island: "Fort Sumter cannot be retaken from Morris Island alone. Your mortar batteries have accomplished that work.

parapet of the gorge. But we could have resumed the firing as soon as the walls cooled sufficiently to open the magazine, and then, having blown down the wall left projecting above the parapet, so as to get rid of flying bricks, and built up the main gates with stones and rubbish, the fort would actually have been in a more defensible condition than when the action commenced. ... The want of provisions would soon have caused the surrender of the fort, but with plenty of cartridges the men would have cheerfully fought five or six days, and, if necessary, much longer, on pork alone, of which we had a sufficient supply. I do not think that a breach could have been effected in the gorge at the distance of the battery on Cumming's Point within a week or ten days; and even then, with the small garrison to defend it and means for obstructing it at our disposal, the operation of assaulting it, with even vastly superior numbers, would have been very doubtful in its results.*

An ambitious and combative commander, therefore, carefully noting these elements of strength and resistance, and seeing a reliev ing fleet at the mouth of the harbor, would have "held the fort," and sent back a message of defiance. But when Anderson first took command of Sumter he wrote that "my position here is rather a politico-military than a military one," and on this assumption he seems to have acted throughout. Viewed in a political light, his conduct is perfectly justifiable. He had faithfully maintained the authority of the Government and the honor of the flag. He had repelled force by force. Obeying President Lincoln's instructions, he had incurred the ordinary risks of war, and now possessed full authority to save himself and his command by capitulation.

In the bombardment of Sumter the insurgents for the third time made active, aggressive war upon the United States, even if we leave out of sight the occupation of forts by simple entrance or by the show of force, the building of batteries to menace Sumter, and receiving the surrender made by Twiggs in Texas. In fact, since the 27th of December, a continued series of acts had been perpetrated by them, not only outraging the authority of, but levying actual war against, the United States.

The rebels indulged in great rejoicing over their victory. Charleston, which had for two days witnessed the bombardment almost en masse, was once more vociferous with speeches and ablaze with bonfires; while at Montgomery the insurgent Secretary of War ordered an official salute to celebrate the surrender, and to emphasize the prediction of the previous evening that the rebel flag would

It cannot be touched from Cumming's Point. The Let the enemy oclate bombardment shows that. cupy it [Morris Island] entirely. We can shell him out from our remaining mortar batteries and keep him at a distance." Whiting to Beauregard, April 17, 1861. MS.