Fort Sumter

08 Nov 2006  very late at night  Matt Winckler

Geoff’s comment on this post spurred me to write about the context of the Confederates firing the first shots of the war at Fort Sumter.

Regarding Fort Sumter and the idea of “peaceful secession”: the Confederacy did fire the first shots at Fort Sumter. But that’s an event that must be tempered by the surrounding context. South Carolina seceded from the Union on 20 December 1860. Several other states followed. At that point, the sitting duck Federal president (Buchanan) agreed to remove troops from Southern ports (where Federal forts were in place to collect the tariff on incoming ships - the ridiculously high tariff being one of the primary causes of the war). The Federal troops left all the forts except Sumter in Charleston Bay, despite the fact that South Carolina claimed it as part of the state. I quote from The War Between the States:

Within days of taking office, Lincoln was seeking the support of his cabinet to supply - and thus to hold - Fort Sumter. The attorney general and the secretaries of war, navy, interior, and state all opposed the idea. Their fears of such action included the loss of the fort, secession of the many and large border states, and the “calamity” of civil war. …[CSA President] Davis and the new Confederate government urged the Federals to leave Fort Sumter of their own accord in peace as they had every other coastal fort in the South. But Wall Street and the other New England commercial powers - only now pugilistic toward the South because of the imminent departure of their tariff protection and revenue - leaned on the Lincoln administration with the weight of their commercial might, and by the end of March the President had secret cabinet approval to proceed not only with resupplying Fort Sumter, but to do so with an armed fleet of ships and soldiers (p. 192).

At the very same time, Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward was attempting to facilitate peaceful secession with the Confederacy - and “was promising the Southern commissioners the fort would be abandoned within a few days” (p. 193). These efforts continued until 7 April, when the Confederates learned of Lincoln’s plan to dispatch ships and troops to resupply Sumter. (In the meantime, CSA General Beauregard had been resupplying the Federals at Fort Sumter himself.) Beauregard had been continuously urging the Federal troops to evacuate the fort and leave in peace.

When Lincoln’s initial reinforcement ships arrived, the Confederates did not fire on them, but rather intercepted them and ordered them to return north. Then Beauregard repeated his plea to Fort Sumter commander Robert Anderson that he depart with his garrison. Beauregard promised to let all the Federals go and told Anderson they could keep their weapons. As far as the Louisiana native was concerned, the two sides were at peace.

Confederate President Davis, to prevent the fort from being reinforced and blockading the harbor, then ordered Beauregard to fire on the fort. However, this action was hotly contested by Davis’ cabinet. In particular, Secretary of State Robert Toombs (which the book describes as an “arch-secessionist”) had this to say:

“The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has ever seen. Mr. President, it is suicide, it is murder, and will lose us every friend in the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountains to ocean; and legions, now quiet, will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary, it puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.” (As qtd. in War Between the States p. 169.)

Beauregard once more urged the Federals to evacuate (providing ships for them to do so), and once again they refused. The battle for Fort Sumter began on 12 April 1861. Beauregard bombarded the fort for half an hour, then once again sent evacuation ships and requested that the Federal troops leave with their weapons. Major Anderson refused, and Beauregard continued the attack. The Federals surrendered when they ran out of ammunition, and Beauregard permitted them to evacuate the fort and return north unimpeded.

I think it’s remarkable how eerily correct Toombs ended up being in hindsight, and it is utterly tragic that President Davis did not heed him. It was, in my opinion, an extremely regrettable mistake that the CSA fell into Lincoln’s trap (for a cunning political move it was) and stirred the North against them by firing the first shots and therefore “starting the war”. However, under the circumstances, I think it was an understandable mistake. I think the efforts elsewhere, and Beauregard’s own treatment of the Federals leading up to and following the battle, are better indicators of the true desire of the South - peaceful secession, not bloody revolution.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 23:05 and is filed under History, Second War for Independence, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.