The Day of the Confederacy | Page 8

to a literary temptation. It is so dramatic--that scene of the four
young men holding in their hands, during a moment of absolute destiny,
the fate of a people; four young men, in the irresponsible ardor of youth,
refusing to wait three days and forcing war at the instant! It is so
dramatic that one cannot judge harshly the artistic temper which is
unable to reject it. But is the incident historic? Did the four young men
come to Sumter without definite instructions? Was their conference
really anything more than a careful comparing of notes to make sure
they were doing what they were intended to do? Is not the real clue to
the event a message from Beauregard to the Secretary of War telling of
his interview with the pilots? *
*A chief authority for the dramatic version of the council of the aides is
that fiery Virginian, Roger A. Pryor. He and another accompanied the
official messengers, the signers of the note to Anderson, James
Chestnut and Stephen Lee. Years afterwards Pryor told the story of the
council in a way to establish its dramatic significance. But would there
be anything strange if a veteran survivor, looking back to his youth, as
all of us do through more or less of mirage yielded to the unconscious
artist that is in us all and dramatized this event unaware?
Dawn was breaking gray, with a faint rain in the air, when the first
boom of the cannon awakened the city. Other detonations followed in
quick succession. Shells rose into the night from both sides of the

harbor and from floating batteries. How lightly Charleston slept that
night may be inferred from the accounts in the newspapers. "At the
report of the first gun," says the Courier, "the city was nearly emptied
of its inhabitants who crowded the Battery and the wharves to witness
the conflict."
The East Battery and the lower harbor of the lovely city of Charleston
have been preserved almost without alteration. What they are today
they were in the breaking dawn on April 12, 1861. Business has gone
up the rivers between which Charleston lies and has left the point of the
city's peninsula, where East Battery looks outward to the Atlantic, in its
perfect charm. There large houses, pillared, with high piazzas, stand
apart one from another among gardens. With few exceptions they were
built before the middle of the century and all, with one exception, show
the classical taste of those days. The mariner, entering the spacious
inner sea that is Charleston Harbor, sights this row of stately mansions
even before he crosses the bar seven miles distant. Holding straight
onward up into the land he heads first for the famous little island where,
nowadays, in their halo of thrilling recollection, the walls of Sumter,
rising sheer from the bosom of the water, drowse idle. Close under the
lee of Sumter, the incoming steersman brings his ship about and
chooses, probably, the eastward of two huge tentacles of the sea
between which lies the city's long but narrow peninsula. To the
steersman it shows a skyline serrated by steeples, fronted by sea,
flanked southward by sea, backgrounded by an estuary, and looped
about by a sickle of wooded islands. This same scene, so far as city and
nature go, was beheld by the crowds that swarmed East Battery, a
flagstone marine parade along the seaward side of the boulevard that
faces Sumter; that filled the windows and even the housetops; that
watched the bombardment with the eagerness of an audience in an
amphitheater; that applauded every telling shot with clapping of hands
and waving of shawls and handkerchiefs. The fort lay distant from
them about three miles, but only some fifteen hundred yards from Fort
Johnston on one side and about a mile from Fort Moultrie on the other.
From both of these latter, the cannon of those days were equal to the
task of harassing Sumter. Early in the morning of the 12th of April,
though not until broad day had come, did Anderson make reply. All

that day, at first under heavily rolling cloud and later through curiously
misty sunshine, the fire and counterfire continued. "The enthusiasm and
fearlessness of the spectators," says the Charleston Mercury, "knew no
bounds." Reckless observers even put out in small boats and roamed
about the harbor almost under the guns of the fort. Outside the bar,
vessels of the relieving squadron were now visible, and to these
Anderson signaled for aid. They made an attempt to reach the fort, but
only part of the squadron had arrived; and the vessels necessary to raise
the siege were not there. The attempt ended in failure. When night
came, a string of rowboats each carrying a huge torch kept watch along
the