Abraham Lincoln: a History Volume Ii Part 34

David Clopton of Alabama.

Sydenham Moore of Alabama.

J.L.M. Curry of Alabama.

J.A. Stallworth of Alabama.

J.W.H. Underwood of Georgia.

L.J. Gartrell of Georgia.

James Jackson of Georgia.

John J. Jones of Georgia.

Martin J. Crawford of Georgia.

Alfred Iverson, U.S. Senator, Georgia.

George S. Hawkins of Florida.

T.C. Hindman of Arkansas.

Jefferson Davis, U.S. Senator, Mississippi.

A.G. Brown, U.S. Senator, Mississippi.

Wm. Barksdale of Mississippi.

O.R. Singleton of Mississippi.

Reuben Davis of Mississippi.

Burton Craige of North Carolina.

Thomas Ruffin of North Carolina.

John Slidell, U.S. Senator, Louisiana.

J.P. Benjamin, U.S. Senator, Louisiana.

J.M. Landrum of Louisiana.

Louis T. Wigfall, U.S. Senator, Texas.

John Hemphill, U.S. Senator, Texas.

J.H. Reagan of Texas.

M.L. Bonham of South Carolina.

Wm. Porcher Miles of South Carolina.

John McQueen of South Carolina.

John D. Ashmore of South Carolina.

This proclamation of revolution, when a.n.a.lyzed, reveals with sufficient clearness the design and industry with which the conspirators were step by step building up their preconcerted movement of secession and rebellion. Every justifying allegation in the doc.u.ment was notoriously untrue.

Instead of the argument being exhausted, it was scarcely begun. So far from Congressional or const.i.tutional relief having been refused, the Southern demand for them had not been formulated. Not only had no committee denied hearing or action, but the Democratic Senate, at the instance of a Southern State, had ordered the Committee of Thirteen, which the Democratic and Southern Vice-President had not yet even appointed; and when the names were announced a week later, Jefferson Davis, one of the signers of this complaint of non-action, was the only man who refused to serve on the committee--a refusal he withdrew when persuaded by his co-conspirators that he could better aid their designs by accepting. On the other hand, the Committee of Thirty-three, raised by the Republican House, appointed by a Northern Speaker, and presided over by a Northern chairman, had the day before by more than a two-thirds vote distinctly tendered the Southern people "any reasonable, proper, and const.i.tutional remedies and effectual guarantees."

Outside of Congressional circles there was the same absence of any new complications, any new threats, any new dangers from the North. Since the day when Abraham Lincoln was elected President there had been absolutely no change of word or act in the att.i.tude and intention of himself or his followers. By no possibility could they exert a particle of adverse political power, executive, legislative, or judicial, for nearly three months. Not only was executive authority in the hands of a Democratic Administration, which had made itself the peculiar champion of the Southern party, but it had yielded every successive demand of administrative policy made by the conspirators themselves. The signers of this address to their Southern const.i.tuents had not one single excuse.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FORTY MUSKETS

Like the commandant of Fort Moultrie, the other officers of the garrison keenly watched the development of hostile public sentiment, and the steady progress of the secession movement. Some had their wives and families with them, and to the apprehensions for the honor of their flag, and the welfare of their country, was added a tenderer solicitude than even that which they felt for their own lives and persons.

Hostility from the const.i.tuted authorities of South Carolina or a tumultuary outbreak of the Charleston rabble was liable to bring overwhelming numbers down upon them at any hour of the day or night.

The special study of this danger, or rather of the means to meet and counteract it, fell to Captain J.G. Foster, of the engineer corps, who had been a.s.signed to the charge of these fortifications on the 1st of September. But his services were also in demand elsewhere, and for more than two months afterwards the works at Baltimore appear to have claimed the larger part of his time. On the day after the Presidential election he was directed to give the Charleston forts his personal supervision, and he arrived there on the 11th of November, remaining thenceforward till the surrender of Sumter.

[Sidenote] Lieut. Breck to Major Deas, June 18, 1860.

In time of peace, the administration of military affairs in the United States is somewhat spasmodic, resulting directly and unavoidably from the fact of our maintaining only the merest skeleton of a standing army compared to the vast territorial extent of the Union. As an incident of this system, Fort Moultrie had been allowed to become defenseless. "A child ten years old can easily come into the fort over the sand-banks,"

wrote an officer June 18, 1860, "and the wall offers little or no obstacle." "The ease with which the walls can now be got over without any a.s.sistance renders the place more of a trap, in which the garrison may be shot down from the parapet, than a means of defense. To persons looking on it appears strange, not to say ridiculous, that the only garrisoned fort in the harbor should be so much banked in with sand, that the walls in some places are not one foot above the tops of the banks."

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Nov. 14, 1860, W.R. Vol. I., p. 73.

By the 14th of November Captain Foster had removed the sand which had drifted against the walls, repaired the latter, and supplied certain expedients in the way of temporary obstructions and defenses which were suggested by his professional skill, and available within his resources. "I have made these temporary defenses as inexpensive as possible," he writes, "and they consist simply of a stout board fence ten feet high, surmounted by strips filled with nail-points, with a dry brick wall two bricks thick on the inside, raised to the height of a man's head, and pierced with embrasures and a sufficient number of loop-holes. Their immediate construction has satisfied and gratified the commanding officer, Colonel Gardiner, and they are, I think, adequate to the present wants of the garrison."

Of what avail, however, all the resources of engineering science, where forts were absolutely soldierless, and their walls without even a solitary sentinel? This was the condition of Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney, after weeks of warning and positive entreaty to the Government at Washington, by engineer, inspectors, and commandants alike, all without having brought one word of encouragement or a single recruit.

But though the President and Secretary of War neglected their proper duty, Captain Foster did not remit his efforts. The exposed condition of these two priceless forts was the daily burden of his thoughts.

Under Colonel Gardiner he had asked for forty muskets to arm his workmen to defend Sumter. The engineer bureau at Washington, seconding the suggestion, had obtained the approval of the Secretary of War, and had issued the order to the storekeeper of the Charleston a.r.s.enal. But when the matter was brought to the notice of Colonel Gardiner he objected. He was unwilling that this expedient, of doubtful utility at best, should serve as an excuse to the Secretary of War to refuse to send him the substantial reenforcement of two regular companies and fifty drilled recruits which he had requested.

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Nov. 24, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 77.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 2, 1860.

[Sidenote] Indors.e.m.e.nt, Dec. 6 and 7. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 83, 84.

[Sidenote] Wright to Foster, Nov. 28, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 78.

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Dec. 2, 1860.

[Sidenote] Indors.e.m.e.nt, Dec. 6 and 7.

It has already been stated how Colonel Gardiner, instead of obtaining his reenforcements, lost his command, and as a consequence Captain Foster's order for the forty muskets was duly put to slumber in a pigeon-hole at the a.r.s.enal. When Major Anderson arrived and a.s.sumed control he not only, as we have seen, repeated the demand for additional troops, but recognizing at a glance the immense interests at stake had himself renewed to Captain Foster the suggestion about arming some engineer workmen. Captain Foster promptly made the application to the department for permission, and soon after for arms. Permission came in due course of mail; but by this time Secretary Floyd would issue no order for the hundred muskets asked for.

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Dec. 4, 1860, W.R. Vol. I., p. 85.

Nevertheless, the working party of thirty was quartered in Castle Pinckney as quietly as possible, in order not to irritate the sensitive Charlestonians, and the officers and overseers in the two forts were instructed to sound and test the loyalty and trustworthiness of the mechanics and laborers. Those in Sumter had been brought from Baltimore, and in them Captain Foster placed his greatest hopes; but they disappointed him. On December 3 his overseer informed him that while they professed a willingness to resist a mob, they were disinclined to fight any organized volunteer force, and he was reluctantly compelled to abandon the scheme, at least as to Fort Sumter. But he still clung to the hope that the thirty men sent to Castle Pinckney, having been chosen with more care, might prove of some service in the hour of need. He gave orders to his officers to resist to the utmost any demands or attempts on the works, "Having done thus much," he wrote to the department, "which is all I can do in this respect, I feel that I have done my duty, and that if any overt act takes place, no blame can properly attach to me. I regret, however, that sufficient soldiers are not in this harbor to garrison these two works. The Government will soon have to decide the question whether to maintain them or to give them up to South Carolina. If it be decided to maintain them, troops must instantly be sent and in large numbers."

Though neither Major Anderson nor Captain Foster could obtain any official replies to distinct and vital questions involving the issue of peace or war, a trivial episode soon furnished them a very broad hint as to what the Secretary of War would ultimately do about the forts.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 20, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 100.

On the same day on which, the South Carolina secession convention met at Columbia, the State capital, Captain Foster had occasion to go to the United States a.r.s.enal in the city of Charleston to procure some machinery used in mounting heavy guns. While there he remembered that two ordnance sergeants, respectively in charge of Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney, had applied to him for the arms to which they were by regulations ent.i.tled. He therefore asked the military storekeeper in charge of the a.r.s.enal for two muskets and accouterments for those two sergeants. The storekeeper replied that he had no authority for the issue of two muskets for this purpose, but that the old order for forty muskets was on file, and the muskets and accouterments were ready packed for delivery to him. Foster received them, and after issuing two muskets to the ordnance sergeants at Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney, placed the remainder in the magazines of those two forts.

[Sidenote] Humphreys to Foster, Dec. 18, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 96.

Whether the vigilance of a spy or the subservient fear or zeal of the storekeeper gave the Charleston authorities information of this trifling removal of arms, cannot now be ascertained. The muskets had scarcely reached their destination when Captain Foster was astonished by receiving a letter from the military storekeeper saying that the shipment of the forty muskets had caused intense excitement; that General Schnierle, the Governor's princ.i.p.al military officer, had called upon him, with the declaration that unless the excitement could be allayed some violent demonstration would be sure to follow; that Colonel Huger had a.s.sured the Governor that no arms should be removed from the a.r.s.enal. He (Captain Humphreys) had pledged his word that the forty muskets and accouterments should be returned "by to-morrow night," and he therefore asked Captain Foster to make good his pledge.

Captain Foster wrote a temperate reply to the storekeeper, which, in substance, he embodied in the more vigorous and outspoken report he immediately made to the Ordnance Department at Washington: "I have no official knowledge (or positive personal evidence either) that Colonel Huger a.s.sured the Governor that no arms should be removed from the a.r.s.enal, nor that, if he did so, he spoke by authority of the Government; but on the other hand I do know that an order was given to issue to me forty muskets; that I actually needed them to protect Government property and the lives of my a.s.sistants, and the ordnance sergeants under them at Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney, and that I have them in my possession. To give them up on a demand of this kind seems to me as an act not expected of me by the Government, and as almost suicidal under the circ.u.mstances. It would place the two forts under my charge at the mercy of a mob. Neither of the ordnance sergeants at Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney had muskets until I got these, and Lieutenants Snyder and Meade were likewise totally dest.i.tute of arms."

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Dec. 18, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 95, 96.

"I propose to refer the matter to Washington, and am to see several gentlemen, who are prominent in this matter, to-morrow. I am not disposed to surrender these arms under a threat of this kind, especially when I know that I am only doing my duty to the Government."

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Dec. 20, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 101.

[Sidenote] Foster to De Russy, Dec. 19, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., pp. 97, 98.