Fort Sumter Bombarded: Sullivan's Island and Cumming's Point
On the 11th of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln left his home in Springfield, Illinois, and began his journey to Washington. On reaching Harrisburg, indications of a purpose violently to oppose his progress became apparent, and his journey from this point was performed secretly. His inaugural address, delivered on the 4th of Marc, was conciliatory in tone, and the envoys from the Confederate government, afterwards sent to Washington, were received with a lack of plain-speaking that gave them hopes of a non-interference policy. It was not until April that any decisive action was taken by the new administration. Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, was beleaguered by a Confederate force. Was it to be given up without a struggle? This was just then the vital question, and the decision of the administration was manifested by secret but rapid preparations to relieve the fort. Early in April a well-appointed fleet sailed southward for this purpose. As soon as the fact came clearly to the knowledge of the leaders at Charleston, hostilities were determined upon, unless Anderson would at once consent to evacuated the fort. On April 12 he offered to evacuate on the 15th if not by that date aided by the government. In reply he was given one hour in which to decide, at the end of which time fire would be opened on the fort. An interesting description of the stirring events that succeeded we select from Victor's "History of the Southern Rebellion."]
PUNCTUALLY at the hour indicated--twenty minutes past four A.M.--the roar of a mortar from Sullivan's Island announced the war begun. A second bomb from the same battery followed; then Fort Moultrie answered with the thunder of a columbiad; Cumming's Point next, and the Floating Battery, dropped in their resonant notes; then a pause, but only for a moment. A roar of fifty guns burst in concert, a chorus to the solemn prelude which must have startled the spirits of the patriotic dead in their slumbers.
Sumter lay off in the waters, the centre of that appalling circle of fire. The early morning shadows had lifted from its ramparts to discover the stars and stripes floating from the garrison staff; but it was as silent amid that storm as if no living soul panted and fretted within its walls. It was the silence of duty,--of men resolved on death, if their country called for the sacrifice. For months the little garrison had been pent up in the fortress, over-worked and underfed, but not a murmur escaped the men, and the hour of assault found all prepared for their leader's orders,--to defend the fort to the last.
The sentinels were removed from the parapet, the posterns closed, and the order given for the men to keep close within the casements until the call of the drum. Breakfast was quietly served at six o'clock, the shot and shell of the enemy thundering against the walls and pouring within the enclosure with remarkable precision. After breakfast, disposition was calmly made for the day's work. The casements were supplied from the magazines; the guns, without tangents or scales, and even destitute of bearing-screws, were to be ranged by the eyes and fired "by guess;" the little force was told off in relays, composed of three reliefs, equally dividing the officers and men. Captain Doubleday took the first detachment, and fired the first gun at seven o'clock. The captain directed his guns at Moultrie, at the Cumming's Point iron battery, the floating iron-clad battery anchored off the end of Sullivan's Island, and the enfilading battery on Sullivan's Island,--all of which were then pouring in a scathing storm of solid shot. To the mortar-batteries on James Island and Mount Pleasant, and to Fort Johnson, but little attention was paid,--only an occasional columbiad answering their terrific messengers to prove its defiance. The parapet-guns were not served after a few rounds, as their exposed condition rendered it impossible to work them without a sacrifice of men,--a sacrifice Anderson would not needlessly allow. Throughout all that fearful fray the commander seemed never to lose sight of the men; and that not a man was lost during the bombardment reflects quite as much honor upon him as the defence did honor to his devotion to duty.
The eagerness of the men within the fort was so great that the reliefs refused to await their turns, while a body of Irish laborers, who at first declined to handle the heavy guns, soon were among the most enthusiastic of the defenders.
Their devotion, indeed, became reckless. An officer stated that, having ordered the barbette guns to be silenced, owing to the murderous fire made upon them by the rifled ordnance of the enfilading battery, he was surprised to hear a report from one of the exposed forty-two-pounders. Proceeding to the parapet, he found a party of the workmen serving the gun. "I saw one of them," he stated, "stooping over, with his hands on his knees, convulsed with joy, while the tears rolled down his powder-begrimed cheeks. `What are you doing there with that gun?' I asked. `Hit it right in the centre,' was the reply, the man meaning that his shot had taken effect in the centre of the floating battery."
Another officer present thus recorded the nature and effect of that literal rain of iron which all the day long (Friday) poured in upon the still defiant walls: