The Day of the Confederacy | Page 7

came and went, and there was no
consolation for the troubled men of the upper South who did not want
to secede but were resolved not to abandon local autonomy. Virginia
was the key to the situation. If Virginia could be forced into secession,
the rest of the upper South would inevitably follow. Therefore a
Virginia hothead, Roger A. Pryor, being in Charleston in those
wavering days, poured out his heart in fiery words, urging a Charleston
crowd to precipitate war, in the certainty that Virginia would then have
to come to their aid. When at last Sumter was fired upon and Lincoln
called for volunteers, the second stage of the secession movement
ended in a thunderclap. The third period was occupied by the second
group of secessions: Virginia on the 17th of April, North Carolina and
Arkansas during May, Tennessee early in June.
Sumter was the turning-point. The boom of the first cannon trained on
the island fortress deserves all the rhetoric it has inspired. Who was
immediately responsible for that firing which was destiny? Ultimate
responsibility is not upon any person. War had to be. If Sumter had not
been the starting-point, some other would have been found.
Nevertheless the question of immediate responsibility, of whose word it
was that served as the signal to begin, has produced an historic
controversy.
When it was known at Charleston that Lincoln would attempt to
provision the fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter to
the Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at
Montgomery, hesitated--drawn between the wish to keep their hold

upon the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and
the desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of
State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his
resolution and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is
suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.... It is
unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal," said he. But the
Cabinet and the President decided to take the risk. To General Pierre
Beauregard, recently placed in command of the militia assembled at
Charleston, word was sent to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter.
On Thursday, the 7th of April, besides his instructions from
Montgomery, Beauregard was in receipt of a telegram from the
Confederate commissioners at Washington, repeating newspaper
statements that the Federal relief expedition intended to land a force
"which will overcome all opposition." There seems no doubt that
Beauregard did not believe that the expedition was intended merely to
provision Sumter. Probably every one in Charleston thought that the
Federal authorities were trying to deceive them, that Lincoln's promise
not to do more than provision Sumter was a mere blind. Fearfulness
that delay might render Sumter impregnable lay back of Beauregard's
formal demand, on the 11th of April, for the surrender of the fort.
Anderson refused but "made some verbal observations" to the aides
who brought him the demand. In effect he said that lack of supplies
would compel him to surrender by the fifteenth. When this information
was taken back to the city, eager crowds were in the streets of
Charleston discussing the report that a bombardment would soon begin.
But the afternoon passed; night fell; and nothing was done. On the
beautiful terrace along the sea known as East Battery, people
congregated, watching the silent fortress whose brick walls rose sheer
from the midst of the harbor. The early hours of the night went by and
as midnight approached and still there was no flash from either the
fortress or the shore batteries which threatened it, the crowds broke up.
Meanwhile there was anxious consultation at the hotel where
Beauregard had fixed his headquarters. Pilots came in from the sea to
report to the General that a Federal vessel had appeared off the mouth
of the harbor. This news may well explain the hasty dispatch of a

second expedition to Sumter in the middle of the night. At half after
one, Friday morning, four young men, aides of Beauregard, entered the
fort. Anderson repeated his refusal to surrender at once but admitted
that he would have to surrender within three days. Thereupon the aides
held a council of war. They decided that the reply was unsatisfactory
and wrote out a brief note which they handed to Anderson informing
him that the Confederates would open "fire upon Fort Sumter in one
hour from this time." The note was dated 3:20 A.M. The aides then
proceeded to Fort Johnston on the south side of the harbor and gave the
order to fire.
The council of the aides at Sumter is the dramatic detail that has caught
the imagination of historians and has led them, at least in some cases,
to yield