When Gustavus Fox reached Charleston, he spent hours futilely searching for the Powhatan, having no clue the vessel had been misrouted. Nor did he know that Confederate authorities in Montgomery had intercepted his plans and ordered the commander in Charleston, Brigadier General Pierre Beauregard, to attack the fort before the Powhatan and Union convoy were due to arrive. At 3:30 a.m. on April 12, Beauregard sent a note to Anderson announcing his intent to commence firing in one hour. Anderson’s small garrison of sixty men returned fire but were quickly overwhelmed by the Confederate force of nine thousand. They had no chance, Fox lamented, without the Powhatan’s men, howitzers, and “fighting launches.” Abner Doubleday, an officer on Anderson’s staff, recalled that “the conflagration was terrible and disastrous…. One-fifth of the fort was on fire, and the wind drove the smoke in dense masses into the angle where we had all taken refuge.”
Thirty-four hours after the fighting began, Major Anderson surrendered. In a gesture that forever endeared him to the North, he brought his men together and fired a dignified fifty-round salute to the shredded American flag before hauling it down and leaving the fort. Incredibly, only one Union soldier died, the result of an accidental explosion of gunpowder during the salute to the flag. Beauregard, who had been taught by Anderson at West Point and had great respect for him, waited until Anderson had departed before entering the fort, as “it would be an unhonorable thing…to be present at the humiliation of his friend.”
Captain Fox was inconsolable. Convinced that his mission would have been successful with the missing Powhatan, he believed that for a failure that was not his fault, he had lost his “reputation with the general public.” Lincoln, once more, assumed the blame, assuring him that “by an accident, for which you were in no wise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent was, you were deprived of a war vessel with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprize. I most cheerfully and truly declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort, have greatly heightened you, in my estimation.
“You and I,” he continued, “both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.”
Critics later claimed that Lincoln had maneuvered the South into beginning the war. In fact, he had simply followed his inaugural pledge that he would “hold” the properties belonging to the government, “but beyond what may be necessary” to accomplish this, “there will be no invasion—no using of force.” Fort Sumter could not be held without food and supplies. Had Lincoln chosen to abandon the fort, he would have violated his pledge to the North. Had he used force in any way other than to “hold” government properties, he would have breached his promise to the South.
The Confederates had fired the first shot. A war had begun that no one imagined would last four years and cost greater than six hundred thousand lives—more than the cumulative total of all our other wars, from the Revolution to Iraq. The devastation and sacrifice would reach into every community, into almost every family, in a nation of 31.5 million. In proportion to today’s population, the number of deaths would exceed five million.
CHAPTER 13
“THE BALL HAS OPENED”
NEWS OF THE CONFEDERATE ATTACK on Fort Sumter spread throughout the North that weekend. Walt Whitman recalled hearing the shouts of newsboys after he emerged from an opera on 14th Street and was strolling down Broadway late Saturday night. At the Metropolitan Hotel, “where the great lamps were still brightly blazing,” the news was read to a crowd of thirty or forty suddenly gathered round. More than twenty years later, he could “almost see them there now, under the lamps at midnight again.”
The “firing on the flag” produced a “volcanic upheaval” in the North, Whitman observed, “which at once substantially settled the question of disunion.” The National Intelligencer spoke for many Northerners: “Our people now, one and all, are determined to sustain the Government and demand a vigorous prosecution of the war inaugurated by the disunionists. All sympathy with them is dead.”
The fevered excitement in the North was mirrored in the South. “The ball has opened,” a dispatch from Charleston, South Carolina, began. “The excitement in the community is indescribable. With the very first boom of the guns thousands rushed from their beds to the harbor front, and all day every available place has been thronged by ladies and gentlemen, viewing the spectacle through their glasses.”
On Sunday, Lincoln returned from church and immediately called his cabinet into session. He had decided to issue a proclamation to the North, calling out state militias and fixing a time for Congress to reconvene. The number of volunteer soldiers to be requested came under debate. Some wanted 100,000, others 50,000; Lincoln settled on 75,000. The timing of the congressional session also posed a difficult question. While the executive branch needed Congress to raise armies and authorize spending, Lincoln was advised that “to wait for ‘many men of many minds’ to shape a war policy would be to invite disaster.” Seward was particularly adamant on this point, believing that “history tells us that kings who call extra parliaments lose their heads.” Lincoln and his cabinet set the Fourth of July as the date for Congress to reconvene, relying on “their patriotism to sanction the war measures taken prior to that time by the Executive.”
John Nicolay made a copy of the president’s proclamation and delivered it to the secretary of state, who stamped the great seal and sent it for publication the following day. That afternoon, Lincoln took a carriage ride with his boys and Nicolay, trying for a moment to distract himself from the increasingly onerous events. Upon his return, he welcomed his old rival Stephen Douglas for a private meeting of several hours. Douglas was not well; a lifetime of alcohol and frenetic activity had taken its toll. In two months’ time, he would be dead. Nevertheless, he offered his solid support to Lincoln, afterward publicly declaring himself ready “to sustain the President in the exercise of his constitutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain the Government.” His statement proved tremendously helpful in mobilizing Democratic support. “In this hour of trial it becomes the duty of every patriotic citizen to sustain the General Government,” one Douglas paper began. Another urged “every man to lay aside his party bias…give up small prejudices and go in, heart and hand, to put down treason and traitors.”
“The response to the Proclamation at the North,” Fred Seward recalled, “was all or more than could be anticipated. Every Governor of a free State promptly promised that his quota should be forthcoming. An enthusiastic outburst of patriotic feeling—an ‘uprising of the North’ in town and country—was reported by telegraph.” Northern newspapers described massive rallies, with bands blaring and volunteers marching in support of the Union. Old party lines seemed to have evaporated. “We begin to look like a United North,” George Templeton Strong recorded in his diary, prophesying that the Democratic New York Herald would soon “denounce Jefferson Davis as it denounced Lincoln a week ago.”
The enthusiastic solidarity of the North dangerously underestimated the strength and determination of the South. Seward predicted that the war would be over in sixty days. John Hay expressed the condescending wish that it would “be bloody and short, in pity to the maniac South. They are weak, ignorant, bankrupt in money and credit. Their army is a vast mob, insubordinate and hungry…. What is before them but defeat, poverty, dissensions, insurrections and ruin.”
Ominous signals from the South soon deflated these facile forecasts. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky refused to send troops “for the wicked purpose of subduing [their] sister Southern States.” Then, on April 17, citing the president’s call to arms, the vital state of Virginia seceded from the Union. The historian James Randall would designate this act “one of the most fateful events in American history.” News of Virginia’s decision provoked jubilati
on throughout the South. “We never saw our population so much excited as it was yesterday afternoon, when the glorious news spread all over town as wildfire, that Virginia, the ‘Mother of Presidents,’ had seceded at last,” the New Orleans Daily Picayune reported. “Citizens on the sidewalks, were shaking each other by the hand, our office was overcrowded, the boys were running to and fro, unable to restrain their delight, and now and then venting their enthusiasm by giving a hearty hurrah.”
In their excitement, Southerners fell victim to the same hectic misjudgment that plagued the North, overstating their own chances as they underestimated their opponent’s will. “And now we are eight!” the Picayune exulted, predicting they would soon be fifteen when all the remaining slave states followed Virginia’s lead. In fact, the Old Dominion’s action prodded only three more states to join the Confederacy—North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. For many agonizing months, however, Lincoln would remain apprehensive about the border states of Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky.
The day after Virginia seceded, Francis Blair, Sr., invited Colonel Robert E. Lee to his yellow house on Pennsylvania Avenue. A graduate of West Point, the fifty-four-year-old Lee had served in the Mexican War, held the post of superintendent at West Point, and commanded the forces that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. General Scott regarded him as “the very best soldier I ever saw in the field.” Lincoln had designated Blair to tender Lee the highest-ranking military position within the president’s power to proffer.
“I come to you on the part of President Lincoln,” Blair began, “to ask whether any inducement that he can offer will prevail on you to take command of the Union army?” Lee responded “as candidly and as courteously” as he could: “Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?”
When the meeting ended, Lee called upon old General Scott to discuss the dilemma further. Then he returned to his Arlington home to think. Two days later, he contacted Scott to tender his resignation from the U.S. Army. “It would have been presented at once,” Lee explained, “but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed. During the whole of that time, more than 30 years, I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors, & the most cordial friendship from my companions…. I shall carry with me to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, & your name & fame will always be dear to me.”
That same day, a distraught Lee wrote to his sister: “Now we are in a state of war which will yield to nothing.” Though he could apprehend “no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or supposed,” he was unable, he explained, “to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State (with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed) I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword.” Shortly thereafter, Lee was designated commander of the Virginia state forces.
While Lee wrestled with the grim personal consequences of his decision, Lincoln’s brother-in-law Benjamin Hardin Helm confronted a painful decision of his own. Helm, a native of Kentucky and a graduate of West Point, had married Mary’s half sister Emilie in 1856. While conducting business in Springfield, he had stayed with the Lincolns. According to his daughter Katherine, he and Lincoln “formed a friendship which was more like the affection of brothers than the ordinary liking of men.” Two weeks after Sumter, Lincoln brought Helm, a staunch “Southern-rights Democrat,” into his office. “Ben, here is something for you,” Lincoln said, placing a sealed envelope in his hands. “Think it over and let me know what you will do.” The letter offered Helm the rank of major and the prestigious position of paymaster in the Union Army. That afternoon, Helm encountered Lee, whose face betrayed his anxiety. “Are you not feeling well, Colonel Lee?” Helm asked. “Well in body but not in mind,” Lee replied. “In the prime of life I quit a service in which were all my hopes and expectations in this world.” Helm showed Lee Lincoln’s offer and asked for advice, saying, “I have no doubt of his kindly intentions. But he cannot control the elements. There must be a great war.” Lee was “too much disturbed” to render advice, urging Helm to “do as your conscience and your honor bid.”
That night, Emilie Helm later recalled, her husband was unable to sleep. The next day, he returned to the White House. “I am going home,” he told Lincoln. “I will answer you from there. The position you offer me is beyond what I had expected, even in my most hopeful dreams. You have been very generous to me, Mr. Lincoln, generous beyond anything I have ever known. I had no claim upon you, for I opposed your candidacy, and did what I could to prevent your election…. Don’t let this offer be made public yet. I will send you my answer in a few days.” When Helm reached Kentucky and spoke with General Simon Bolivar Buckner and his friends, he realized he must decline Lincoln’s offer and “cast his destinies with his native southland.” The time spent in drafting his reply to Lincoln proved to be, he told a friend, “the most painful hour of his life.” Soon after, he received a commission in the Confederate Army, where he eventually became a brigadier general.
EACH DAY BROUGHT NEW conflicts and decisions as Lincoln struggled to stabilize the beleaguered Union. In a contentious cabinet meeting, Seward argued that a blockade of Southern ports should be instituted at once. Recognized by the law of nations, the blockade would grant the Union the power to search and seize vessels. Gideon Welles countered that to proclaim a blockade would mistakenly acknowledge that the Union was engaged in a war with the South and encourage foreign powers to extend belligerent rights to the Confederacy. Better to simply close the ports against the insurrection and use the policing powers of municipal law to seize entering or exiting ships. The cabinet split down the middle. Chase, Blair, and Bates backed Welles, while Smith and Cameron sided with Seward. Lincoln concluded that Seward’s position was stronger and issued his formal blockade proclamation on April 19. Welles, despite his initial hesitation, would execute the blockade with great energy and skill.
The commencement of war found Welles and the Navy Department in a grave situation. Southerners, who had made up the majority of navy officers in peacetime, resigned in droves every day. Treason was rampant. Early in April, Lincoln had graciously attended a wedding celebration for the daughter of Captain Frank Buchanan, the commandant of the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Two weeks later, expecting that his home state of Maryland “would soon secede and join the Confederacy,” Buchanan resigned his commission, vowing that he would “not take any part in the defence of this Yard from this date.”
Meanwhile, the secession of Virginia jeopardized the Norfolk Navy Yard. With its strategic location, immense dry dock, great supply of cannons and guns, and premier vessel, the Merrimac, the Norfolk yard was indispensable to both sides. Welles had encouraged Lincoln to reinforce the yard before Sumter fell, but Lincoln had resisted any action that would provoke Virginia. This decision would seriously compromise the Union’s naval strength. By the time Welles received orders to send troops to Norfolk, it was too late. The Confederates had secured control of the Navy Yard. The calamitous news, Charles Francis Adams recorded in his diary, sent him into a state of “extreme uneasiness” about the future of the Union. “We the children of the third and fourth generations are doomed to pay the penalties of the compromises made by the first.”
The first casualties of the war came on April 19, 1861, the same day the blockade was announced. When the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment reached Baltimore by rail en route to defend Washington, the men were attacked by a secessionist mob. “The scene while the troops were changing cars was indescribably fearful,” the Baltimore Sun reported. The enraged crowd, branding the troops “nigger thieves,” assaulted them with knives an
d revolvers. Four soldiers and nine civilians were killed. As George Templeton Strong noted in his diary: “It’s a notable coincidence that the first blood in this great struggle is drawn by Massachusetts men on the anniversary” of the battles of Lexington and Concord that touched off the Revolutionary War.
The president immediately summoned the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland to the White House. Still hoping to keep Maryland in the Union, Lincoln agreed to “make no point of bringing [further troops] through Baltimore” where strident secessionists were concentrated, but insisted that the troops must be allowed to go “around Baltimore.” Shortly after midnight, an angry committee of delegates from Baltimore arrived at the White House to confront Lincoln. John Hay took them to see Cameron, but kept them from the president until morning. The delegation demanded that troops be kept not only out of Baltimore but out of the entire state of Maryland. Lincoln adamantly refused to comply. “I must have troops to defend this Capital,” he replied. “Geographically it lies surrounded by the soil of Maryland…. Our men are not moles, and can’t dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can’t fly through the air. There is no way but to march across, and that they must do.”
The day the war claimed its first casualties was also the day when “the censorship of the press was exercised for the first time at the telegraph office,” a veteran journalist recalled. “When correspondents wished to telegraph the lists of the dead and wounded of the Massachusetts Sixth they found a squad of the National Rifles in possession of the office, with orders to permit the transmission of no messages.” Infuriated, the correspondents rode to Seward’s house to complain. The secretary of state argued that if they sent “accounts of the killed and wounded,” they “would only influence public sentiment, and be an obstacle in the path of reconciliation.” The issue became moot when reporters learned that secessionists had cut all the telegraph wires in Baltimore and demolished all the railroad bridges surrounding the city. Washington was isolated from all communication with the North.