The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

As April began, Seward continued to delay the Confederate commissioners, telling their intermediary that Lincoln was still planning to surrender Fort Sumter, even though he knew that wasn’t the case. Seward still wanted the government to surrender the fort to help smooth things over with the South and get the states to consider re-joining the Union. He sent a self-aggrandizing memorandum to Lincoln outlining his proposal, which Lincoln rejected. Supreme Court Justice Campbell—the intermediary between Seward and the Confederate commissioners—now wrote a letter directly to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, advising him to be patient and wait for Fort Sumter’s surrender. This improper communication between a servant of the US government and a rebel leader was an early sign that Campbell would later become the Confederacy’s Assistant Secretary of War.

By the beginning of April, food had begun to be a severe issue at Fort Sumter.

On April 3, a merchant vessel from Massachusetts got lost and accidentally sailed into Charleson Harbor flying the American flag. Thinking it was a force meant to relieve Fort Sumter, the Confederate batteries fired cannons at it until it retreated. Like with the Star of the West, Major Anderson refrained from firing at the Confederate positions. Many of his men were tired of waiting and wanted to fight back, but Anderson showed them his orders to take only defensive measures. Both Anderson and his men were depressed, without supplies or clear orders from Washington.

In Washington, the reporter Russell met with the Confederate commissioners and other secessionists who made clear to him the irreparable rift between North and South. Russell privately critiqued the Southern men, who “indulged in curious theories in morals and physics” (383) in defense of enslavement. Russell also criticized Seward for his naïve view that secession was a “short-lived thing” (383) that would soon run out of steam.

Anderson began to feel abandoned by his government, which still had not given him clear instructions on how to defend Fort Sumter, or if he should surrender.

By April 5, the Confederate commissioners in Washington were becoming impatient, since the promised surrender of Fort Sumter had not taken place.

Mary Chestnut continued her flirtation with John Manning in Charleston, and now received word that Manning’s wife wanted to begin a flirtation with her husband James.

Edmund Ruffin was furious that Virginia voted against secession. He hoped Lincoln would do something drastic enough to force Virginia to secede.

Realizing his mistake in assigning the mighty warship the Powhatan to two different expeditions, Lincoln urgently tried to get the ship sent on the Fort Sumter relief mission. It was too late, however, and the ship was already on its way to Florida to deposit additional troops at Fort Pickens. It met no resistance on that mission. Gustavus Fox—the man in charge of the Fort Sumter expedition—had no idea that the most powerful ship in his force wouldn’t be there to help.

General Beauregard told Anderson that his men could no longer get supplies from Charleston; they were cut off. Lincoln dispatched a message to South Carolina Governor Pickens alerting him that a relief mission to Fort Sumter was on the way. That message would take a few days to arrive.

Fox’s expedition to Fort Sumter set off on April 8 but ran into a storm that scattered the various ships, compounding the problem—unknown to Fox—that the Powhatan wouldn’t be taking part in the mission. That same day the fort’s garrison spotted a new Confederate battery positioned to strike the top tier of the fort, where the columbiads were located. Major Anderson now saw it as too dangerous to operate those cannons, since they were so exposed.

On April 7, Anderson received a letter from Lincoln alerting him that Fox’s expedition was on the way to support him. Anderson was upset; he viewed Fox’s plan as foolhardy and had thought the fort would be surrendered. In his reply, Anderson wrote that he and his men would do their duty, but that his “heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced” (399). The Confederates in Charleston intercepted Anderson’s reply letter.

On the evening of April 8, emissaries from Washington arrived in Charleston and told Governor Pickens that the mission to resupply Fort Sumter was on the way. Confederate leadership told Beauregard to not let Fort Sumter receive those provisions “under any circumstances” (402). Beauregard alerted Anderson that he was now cutting off mail to and from the fort.

Edmund Ruffin volunteered to join the forces arrayed against Fort Sumter. Given his age, Ruffin’s participation was largely symbolic, though he did get the honor of joining the elite Palmetto Guard.

In Montgomery, Jefferson Davis was tired of delays. Knowing Fox’s force was on the way to Charleston Harbor, Davis summoned his cabinet to debate whether to demand a surrender at Fort Sumter and attack if Major Anderson refused. His cabinet largely supported this strategy, though one dissenter warned that attacking the fort would make the Confederacy responsible for a civil war “greater than any the world has yet seen” (406).

Though it went against their honor to open another man’s mail, the Confederate leaders in Charleston felt these were extraordinary times, so they read Major Anderson’s letter to Washington. They hoped to damage Anderson’s heroic reputation by leaking to the press Anderson’s note that his heart was “not in the war” (409).

On April 9, the Confederate forces took up their positions around Fort Sumter, preparing to stop any incursion from the Union naval force. Mary Chesnut observed the stress of the Southern elite in the city, and Edmund Ruffin wrote in his journal that the people were “greatly excited” (412).