This is the third part of a series about the events and decisions that led to the firing on Fort Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.  

On April 11, 1861, the relief expedition led by Gustavus Fox was nearing Charleston. But General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard had received orders from the Confederate government. He was to demand that Major Robert Anderson evacuate Fort Sumter and, if Anderson refused, “to reduce it.” 

Beauregard sent three messengers to Sumter under a flag of truce. They delivered his message, which declared that the Confederacy “can no longer delay assuming actual possession of a fortification commanding the entrance of one of their harbors.” Anderson, he said, must surrender or face shelling. 

Colonel James Chesnut—the head of the delegation and just months before a member of the U.S. Senate—gave Anderson some time to discuss the matter with his officers. The major wrote his polite and formal refusal to Beauregard—once a student of his at West Point— “it is a demand which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligations to my Government, prevent my compliance.” 

As the three messengers returned to their boat, Anderson let on that his garrison was in dire straits. “If you do not batter the fort to pieces about us, we shall be starved out in a few days.” asked if he could give that information to Beauregard. Anderson said he could. 

On receiving the news, Beauregard wired his government asking for instructions. Jefferson Davis told him to refrain from firing on the fort if Anderson would say what time he would evacuate the fort and promise not to fire on the Confederates in the meantime. “If this, or its equivalent, be refused,” the directions said, “reduce the fort as your judgment decides to be most practicable.” 

Shortly after midnight on Friday, April 12, then, Chesnut and the two others returned to Fort Sumter with this new demand. Anderson replied that he would “evacuate Fort Sumter by noon on the 15th . . . should I not receive prior to that time controlling instructions from my Government or additional supplies.” The Confederates found the response inadequate. They informed Anderson that, when they reached the batteries surrounding his fort, those guns would open fire. Anderson shook hands with his adversaries, and they pushed off.  

At 4:30 in the morning, the first Confederate gun fired. Soon all the other batteries opened fire, shattering the still quiet of a Carolina spring morning. Thousands of civilians crowded their own rooftops or wharves on the water’s edge to see the sight. Anderson held his fire until the light of dawn, so his men could better sight their guns. The return fire was feeble: Anderson had a small garrison and few bags for loading powder into his guns. (Eventually the garrison used the commander’s socks for powder bags.) He also had decided not to man the more powerful cannons in the upper level of the fort because doing so would expose his men more to enemy fire. The smaller guns in the lower level were not heavy enough to do much damage. 

Just before the shelling had begun, ships appeared outside the harbor. They were two of Gustavus Fox’s ships and soon after, the warship Pawnee showed up—it had been sent as a replacement for the Powhatan. Fox was finally informed that the Powhatan and its 300 soldiers would not be arriving. He would also not see the three tugboats he had counted on to run those soldiers to the fort: two had ended up elsewhere due to a storm and one had never even left New York. Fox was powerless to do anything to help the fort. All he and his men could do was watch. 

Meanwhile, off in Florida, reinforcements were landed at Fort Pickens uncontested by Confederate guns. That fort in Pensacola’s harbor remained in Union hands throughout the war.  

In Charleston, though, the shelling continued the entire day. The noise and crash was fearsome, but only a few were hurt on either side, and those injuries were minor. On the night of the 13th, the firing subsided. 

The shooting resumed the next day, and the Confederate shelling started a fire in the fort’s barracks. The problem was serious: the powder magazine was nearby. Captain Abner Doubleday, Anderson’s second in command, described the scene in the fort: “The roaring and crackling of the flames, the dense masses of whirling smoke, the bursting of the enemy’s shells, and our own which were exploding in the burning rooms, the crashing of the shot, and the sound of masonry falling in every direction, made the fort a pandemonium.” 

The Confederate fire was constant; Sumter’s responses sporadic. Curiously, several times that the fort did return fire, Confederate soldiers cheered in tribute to the fort’s garrison. But they kept battering the fort, too. 

Shortly before one in the afternoon on the 13th, a shot cracked the fort’s flagstaff. The soldiers caught the flag and reinstated it. The event prompted a farcical end to the battle, however. Former Senator Louis Wigfall of Texas, seeing the U.S. flag go down, took it upon himself to journey by rowboat to the fort and renew the demand for surrender. This time, Anderson agreed, and had his men raise a white flag. Soon thereafter, Beauregard sent official representatives to Anderson and informed him that Wigfall had no real standing. “Gentlemen,” Anderson complained, “this is a very awkward business.” He considered raising the U.S. flag again, but the Confederates agreed to carry the terms of surrender that he had agreed to with Wigfall to Beauregard to see if he would accept them. The general did, the surrender became official, and the siege was over. Cheering erupted in Charleston.  

The next day came the formal surrender ceremony. Ironically, that event also brought about the only death in the battle—the first fatality of the Civil War—a spark from one of the fort’s guns, to be fired in tribute, flew astray and ignited a gun cartridge. Its explosion killed Private Daniel Hough of the U.S. Army and wounded five others, one of whom later died. The surrender was suspended to give Hough a funeral, a Confederate chaplain officiating. When the ceremony resumed, the Union soldiers filed onto one of Fox’s ships to be carried north, and the Confederate flag was raised over Fort Sumter. 

In Charleston, a Southerner wrote “Thank God the day has come—thank God the war is open, and we will conquer or perish.” 

In New York, a Northern woman wrote, “It seems as if we never were alive till now; never had a country till now.” 

Soldier Robert Anderson knew what would happen, though. “Our Southern brethren have done greviously wrong,” he wrote. “They have rebelled and have attacked their father’s house and their loyal brothers. They must be punished and brought back, but this necessity breaks my heart.”  

Words © 2011 AtHome Pilgrim.

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