Captains of the Civil War | Page 4

a mile away. The
proper war garrison of all the forts should have been over a thousand
men. The actual garrison--including officers, band, and the Castle
Pinckney sergeant--was less than a hundred. It was, however, loyal to
the Union; and its commandant, Major Robert Anderson, though born
in the slave-owning State of Kentucky, was determined to fight.
The situation, here as elsewhere, was complicated by Floyd, President
Buchanan's Secretary of War, soon to be forced out of office on a
charge of misapplying public funds. Floyd, as an ardent Southerner,
was using the last lax days of the Buchanan Government to get the
army posts ready for capitulation whenever secession should have
become an accomplished fact. He urged on construction, repairs, and
armament at Charleston, while refusing to strengthen the garrison, in
order, as he said, not to provoke Carolina. Moreover, in November he
had replaced old Colonel Gardner, a Northern veteran of "1812," by
Anderson the Southerner, in whom he hoped to find a good capitulator.
But this time Floyd was wrong.

The day after Christmas Anderson's little garrison at Fort Moultrie
slipped over to Fort Sumter under cover of the dark, quietly removed
Floyd's workmen, who were mostly Baltimore Secessionists, and began
to prepare for. defense. Next morning Charleston was furious and
began to prepare for attack. The South Carolina authorities at once took
formal possession of Pinckney and Moultrie; and three days later seized
the United States Arsenal in Charleston itself. Ten days later again, on
January 9, 1861, the Star of the West, a merchant vessel coming in with
reinforcements and supplies for Anderson, was fired on and forced to
turn back. Anderson, who had expected a man-of-war, would not fire in
her defense, partly because he still hoped there might yet be peace.
While Charleston stood at gaze and Anderson at bay the ferment of
secession was working fast in Florida, where another tiny garrison was
all the Union had to hold its own. This garrison, under two loyal young
lieutenants, Slemmer and Gilman, occupied Barrancas Barracks in
Pensacola Bay. Late at night on the eighth of January (the day before
the Star of the West was fired on at Charleston) some twenty
Secessionists came to seize the old Spanish Fort San Carlos, where, up
to that time, the powder had been kept. This fort, though lying close
beside the barracks, had always been unoccupied; so the Secessionists
looked forward to an easy capture. But, to their dismay, an unexpected
guard challenged them, and, not getting the proper password in reply,
dispersed them with the first shots of the Civil War.
Commodore Armstrong sat idle at the Pensacola Navy Yard, distracted
between the Union and secession. On the ninth Slemmer received
orders from Winfield Scott, General-in-Chief at Washington, to use all
means in defense of Union property. Next morning Slemmer and his
fifty faithful men were landed on Santa Rosa Island, just one mile
across the bay, where the dilapidated old Fort Pickens stood forlorn.
Two days later the Commodore surrendered the Navy Yard, the Stars
and Stripes were lowered, and everything ashore fell into the enemy's
hands. There was no flagstaff at Fort Pickens; but the Union colors
were at once hung out over the northwest bastion, in full view of the
shore, while the Supply and Wyandotte, the only naval vessels in the
bay, and both commanded by loyal men, mastheaded extra colors and

stood clear. Five days afterwards they had to sail for New York; and
Slemmer, whose total garrison had been raised to eighty by the addition
of thirty sailors, was left to hold Fort Pickens if he could.
He had already been summoned to surrender by Colonel Chase and
Captain Farrand, who had left the United States Army and Navy for the
service of the South. Chase, like many another Southern officer, was
stirred to his inmost depths by his own change of allegiance. "I have
come," he said, "to ask of you young officers, officers of the same army
in which I have spent the best and happiest years of my life, the
surrender of this fort; and fearing that I might not be able to say it as I
ought, and also to have it in proper form, I have put it in writing and
will read it." He then began to read. But his eyes filled with tears, and,
stamping his foot, he said: "I can't read it. Here, Farrand, you read it."
Farrand, however, pleading that his eyes were weak, handed the paper
to the younger Union officer, saying, "Here, Gilman, you have good
eyes, please read it." Slemmer refused to surrender and held out till
reinforced in April, by which time the war had begun in earnest. Fort
Pickens was never taken. On the contrary, it supported