Read Coming Fury, Volume 1 Online
Authors: Bruce Catton
1.
Letter of Chesley D. Evans to Mrs. Evans, March 31, 1861, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
2.
B. & L., Vol. I, 56; O.R., Vol. I, 237–38, 273.
3.
Benson J. Lossing, “Mem. of Visit of Mrs. Anderson to Fort Sumter,” in the Goodyear Collection at Yale.
4.
Letter of Anderson to Beauregard, March 26, 1861, in the Goodyear Collection.
5.
Unsigned article, “Charleston Under Arms,” in the
Atlantic Monthly
for January 1861, 488–96.
6.
Fox to Gen. Crawford, May 10, 1882, in the Goodyear Collection.
7.
O.R., Vol. I, 294.
8.
Letter of Beauregard to Maj. J. G. Barnard, March 18, 1861, in Letterbook No. 3, the Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress.
9.
Edward McPherson,
The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion
, 112; Moore’s
Rebellion Record
, Vol. I, Diary, 21–22.
10.
O.R., Vol. I, 13; Crawford, 422.
11.
O.R., loc. cit.; Crawford, 423–24. In the Houghton Library at Harvard University, in the papers of the Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, there are three notebooks bearing the penciled record of hearings held in the fall of 1865 on Major Anderson’s illness and retirement. They contain Anderson’s testimony on the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and have been consulted extensively in the preparation of this chapter. Anderson testifies here that he made the remark about being starved out “jocosely.”
12.
O.R., Vol. I, 299, 301.
13.
The text of Major Anderson’s reply is in O.R., Vol. I, 14. There is a copy of the report of Col. A. R. Chisholm in the Palmer Collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society. In his testimony before the retirement board, Major Anderson said he suspected that Beauregard “wanted to tie my hands” by stipulating that the major should not open fire prior to the evacuation of the fort. It may be worth noting that Major Anderson’s reply, and the decision to open fire, were not referred to the Confederate government. On April 12, after the bombardment had been going on for hours, Secretary of War Walker wired Beauregard: “What was Major Anderson’s reply to the proposition in my dispatch of last night?” Beauregard wired back: “He would not consent. I write today.” (O.R., Vol. I, 305.)
14.
Stephen D. Lee,
The First Step in the War
, B. & L., Vol. I, 76. A typed booklet containing portions of his diary bearing on the events of this night is in the Stephen Dill Lee Papers, Southern Historical Collection. At the retirement hearing Major Anderson said he carefully checked his watch with the watches of the Confederates and told them: “Well, Gentlemen, at half past four you will open your fire upon me. Good morning.”
15.
B. & L., Vol. I, 76; Martin Abbott,
The First Shot at Fort Sumter
, Civil War History, Vol. III, No. I; Robert Lebby,
The First Shot on Fort Sumter
, The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Review, Vol. XII, No. 3, 143–45; D. Augustus Dickert,
History of Kershaw’s Brigade
, 24; Mrs. Chesnut’s Diary, 35.
1.
Wilmot Gibbes De Saussure, Order Book, in the Southern Historical Collection.
2.
Diaries of Edmund Ruffin, Vol. IV, 797–98; Avery Craven,
Edmund Ruffin, Southerner
, 215–17, 219; Dickert,
History of Kershaw’s Brigade
, 29.
3.
Dickert, 17–21.
4.
Major Anderson’s testimony before the retirement board in the Massachusetts Commandery papers, Houghton Library.
5.
The figures for the Fort Sumter garrison are Major Anderson’s; a return dated April 4, 1861, in the Anderson Papers, Library of Congress. Accuracy in regard to the Confederate figures is impossible. The Charleston
Mercury
on May 14, 1861, used the figure of 7000; Gov. Pickens, shortly before the battle, estimated Beauregard’s strength at 6000 (O.R., Vol. I, 292); Rhodes, Vol. III, 355, quotes Russell of the London
Times
as putting the total at 7025. For a good description of Fort Sumter, see John Johnson.
The Defense of Charleston Harbor, Including Fort Sumter and the Adjacent Islands
, 17. The fort’s guns are listed in the report of Capt. J. G. Foster, O.R., Vol. I, 18–19. See also B. & L., Vol. I, 58–60.
6.
B. & L., Vol. I, 67–68.
7.
Ibid, 60–70.
8.
Major Anderson’s testimony, Massachusetts Commandery papers, Houghton Library; B. & L., Vol. I, 71.
9.
Fox’s report, N.O.R., Vol. IV, 249.
10.
Ibid, 240–50.
11.
Major Anderson gives a graphic account of all of this—with due emphasis on the role of Sergeant Hart—in his testimony in the Massachusetts Commandery papers.
12.
Diary in the Stephen Dill Lee Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
13.
Report of Capt. J. G. Foster, O. R., Vol. I, 22–24; Crawford, 441–42; B. & L., Vol. I, 71–73. Russell gives a fine picture of the ineffable Wigfall in
My Diary North and South
, 46.
14.
Crawford, 446–47; diary in the Stephen Dill Lee Papers; Charleston Daily Courier, April 15, 1861; Miss A. Fletcher,
Within Fort Sumter
, 64–66.
1.
Letter of W. S. Rosecrans to Gen. Marcus J. Wright, March 1, 1892, in the Eldridge Collection, Huntington Library.
2.
George Ticknor,
Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor
, Vol. II, 433; John B. McMaster,
A History of the People of the United States During Lincoln’s Administration
, 35; Russell,
My Diary North and South
, 41–42.
3.
John Hay,
Lincoln and the Civil War
, 14; McPherson,
Political History of the United States
, 114; Carl Schurz,
The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz
, Vol. II, 223; Russell, 42.
4.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 71; Basler, Vol. IV, 330.
5.
Basler, Vol. IV, 331–32.
6.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 80–84; letter of Congressman George Ashmun to Isaac N. Arnold, printed in the Cincinnati
Daily
Commercial
, Oct. 28, 1864. Ashmun was present when Lincoln and Douglas had their talk, and he wrote a clear and complete account of it.
7.
Mrs. D. Geraud Wright,
A Southern Girl in ’61
, 52–53. The author, a daughter of Senator Wigfall, quotes from a letter written by a friend in Providence, R.I.
8.
McMaster, Lincoln, op cit, 35.
9.
For the replies of the governors, see O.R., Series Three, Vol. I, 70–83.
10.
Appleton’s
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861
, 735; Moore’s
Rebellion Record
, Vol. I, Documents, 70; letter of W. C. Rives to Robert C. Winthrop, April 19, 1861, in the Robert C. Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
11.
O.R., Vol. II, 3–4; John D. Imboden,
Jackson at Harper’s Ferry in 1861
, in B. & L., Vol. I, 111–18; Charlotte Judd Fairbarn, “Historic Harpers Ferry,” pamphlet, 41–42.
12.
Douglas Southall Freeman,
Robert E. Lee
, in D.A.B., Vol. XI, 122; diary of Cornelius Walker, D.D., entry for April 15, 1861, in the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, Richmond.
13.
Capt. Robert E. Lee,
Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee
, 24–28; letter of Mrs. Lee to Mrs. G. W. Peter, written apparently in April, 1861, on deposit in the Maryland Historical Society. Lee’s account of his talks with Blair and Scott is set forth in memoranda by Col. William Allan, who discussed the matter with Lee in 1868 and 1870, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
14.
Ticknor, op. cit., 434.
1.
Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Vol. I, 89, 93, 114–15; N.O.R., Series Two, Vol. III, 191–95; R. Barnwell Rhett,
The Confederate Government at Montgomery
, B. & L., Vol. I, 109–10.
2.
Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Vol. I, 160–69.
3.
Varina Howell Davis,
Jefferson Davis: a Memoir
, Vol. II, 80; Basler, Vol. IV, 345.
4.
O.R., Series Three, Vol. I, 79–80; Appleton’s
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861
, 444.
5.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 105; O.R., Vol. II, 577; George William Brown,
Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861
, 43. Brown was mayor of Baltimore at the time and he says that notice of the coming of the troops was “purposely withheld” from the city authorities. Two days before the Baltimore riot, General Scott and Secretary of War Cameron sent an unidentified agent north to speed the dispatch of troops and to take measures to safeguard Washington’s railroad connections, which, the agent was told, were liable to be broken in Baltimore. Reaching Baltimore, the agent was told by loyalist citizens
that the passage of state troops would almost certainly cause a riot but that regulars could go through Baltimore without difficulty; “They could not see or admit that, when sworn into the service of the United States, they were no longer State troops but U.S. troops—or militia in the service of the Government.” This agent’s report is in the Cameron Papers, Library of Congress.
Incidentally, John Hay seems to have done the Pennsylvania contingent an injustice in his remark about “unlicked patriotism.” This contingent was composed of five militia companies—from Lewistown, Allentown, Pottsville, and Reading—which were well-trained and disciplined, by the standards of that day, and which on their arrival in Washington mounted guard around the Capitol after being greeted by President Lincoln. In its march across Baltimore this battalion was hooted and stoned by a mob; it is asserted that the first blood shed in the Civil War was shed by Nicholas Biddle, a former slave serving as an officer’s orderly, who was hit in the head by a brick-bat. I am indebted to Dr. S. K. Stevens, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and to Mr. Charles McKnight of Fork, Maryland, for information about these troops.
6.
George William Brown, op. cit., 44–46, 49–53; Col. Edward F. Jones in O.R., Vol. II, 7–9.
7.
Appleton’s
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861
, 56–57; O.R., Vol. II, 9–11; Basler, Vol. IV, 340–42.
8.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 107–8, quoting Taylor but giving no source;
Memoirs of Henry Villard
, Vol. I, 170.
9.
Report of War Department agent in the Cameron Papers, as cited in Note Five, above; Appleton’s
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861
, 752; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 106–7; John Hay,
Lincoln and the Civil War
, 6–11.
10.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 144–45; Appleton’s
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861
, 535; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. I, 43–44.
11.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 146–47; N.O.R., Vol. IV, 288–90; New York
Times
, April 26, 1861; Welles, Vol. I, 45–47; John Sherman Long, “The Gosport Affair, 1861,”
Journal of Southern History
, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, 169.
12.
N.O.R., Vol. IV, 306–9; J. Thomas Scharf,
History of the Confederate States Navy from Its Organization to the Surrender of Its Last Vessel
, 132.
1.
“A Page of Political Correspondence: Unpublished Letters of Mr. Stanton to Mr. Buchanan,”
North American Review
, November 1879. On April 26, 1861, just after the tension was relieved, John G. Nicolay wrote to his wife that for some days after the Baltimore riot “Our intercourse with the outside world was cut off. We heard frequently from Baltimore and different parts of Maryland, but the news had little of encouragement in it. Uniformly, the report was that all heretofore Union men had at once turned secessionists, and were armed and determined to the death to prevent a single additional northern officer crossing
the soil of Maryland.… We were not only surrounded by the enemy but in the midst of traitors.” (John G. Nicolay Papers, Library of Congress.)
2.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 135; Letter of Gov. Hicks to Secretary Seward, April 22, 1861, in the William H. Seward Collection, University of Rochester.
3.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 155–57; unsigned article apparently by Theodore Winthrop, “The New York Seventh Regiment: Our March to Washington,”
Atlantic Monthly
, June 1861.
4.
Appleton’s
Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861
, 444–46; Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vol. I, 589; New York
Times
, April 30, 1861; Rhodes, Vol. III, 388.
5.
McPherson,
A Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion
, 9.
6.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 166; Basler, Vol. IV, 344.
7.
George William Brown,
Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861
, 94–95; O.R., Vol. II, 29–30.
8.
Carl Schurz,
Reminiscences
, Vol. II, 223–25.
9.
O.R., Vol. II, 28–30; Butler,
Ben Butler’s Book
, 237, 240.
10.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 174; Basler, Vol. IV, 429–30. For an excellent discussion of this case, see James G. Randall,
Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln
, 84, 120–21, 161–62. The Merryman case was eventually transferred to civil authority and at last was dropped. (O.R., Series Two, Vol. II, 226.)
11.
Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, Third Session, Part 2, 1372–73, 1376.
12.
Cited in Moore’s
Rebellion Record
, Vol. I, Diary, 61.