The Class of 1846

by John Waugh

  The most malignant of these ingrates, in the view of Doubleday and the other loyal officers in the Moultrie garrison, the one best positioned to do them dirt, was Secretary of War John B. Floyd. Floyd was an ex-governor of Virginia, who had started out an avowed Union man who thought secession unnecessary. However, he also believed secession was only a little less sacred than a divine right for any state wishing to exercise it. He therefore sympathized with the South in whatever action it might see fit to take, and absolutely opposed any move on the part of the federal government to stop it. These views by November 1860 had translated into what looked to Doubleday like barefaced complicity with South Carolina. Floyd seemed intent on thwarting any effort to keep and strengthen the forts in Charleston Harbor—unless to prepare them for a southern takeover. As far as Doubleday was concerned, having a man with those sentiments running the war department was having the wolf watching the sheep.15

  The wolf in this troubled November was not happy with the aged and gouty colonel who was commanding in Charleston harbor. Colonel Gardner had seen better days. He went all the way back to the War of 1812, had fought the Seminoles in Florida, been breveted twice in the Mexican War, and was now creaky in the joints. Major Fitz John Porter, sent that fall by Floyd to make a thorough examination of the garrison, had recommended he be replaced. He just wasn’t right for this very sensitive and demanding post at this delicate and trying hour. Gardner was quite southern in politics—an agreeable fact as far as Floyd was concerned. But the secretary wanted someone commanding in Charleston who was younger and better able to cope with the sensitive situation there—somebody with special qualities. He thought he had just the man.16

  On November 12, Major Robert Anderson in New York received an urgent message from Washington: “The Secretary of War desires to see you, and directs that you proceed to this city and report to him without unnecessary delay.” On November 15, Anderson had his orders to proceed immediately to Fort Moultrie to relieve Colonel Gardner.17

  Floyd believed he had in Anderson, a Kentuckian by birth who had married a Georgia girl, a man who could be relied on to carry out the southern program. In the army Anderson had a reputation as a gentleman—courteous, honest, intelligent, and one of the most thoroughly knowledgeable artillerists in the entire service. As an artillery instructor at West Point he had written the standard textbook on the subject. His friends knew him to be a strong pro-slavery man who was nevertheless opposed to secession and to southern extremism.18

  They all knew, from the secretary down, that he could be counted on to use the utmost restraint, courtesy, and discretion in dealing with the inflamed mood in Charleston. “Of all my acquaintances among men,” a friend said of him, “Anderson had the fewest vices of any one of them.” No “wine, women and play” were in him.19 However, a relative of Anderson’s, who knew him perhaps better than most, could have told Floyd he might be fundamentally wrong about the major’s allegiances. “The Ten Commandments, the Constitution of the United States, and the Army Regulations were his guides in life,” that relative wrote.20 It might be very difficult to persuade a man of such beliefs not to faithfully serve his country and his flag.

  Anderson arrived in Charleston on November 21, and on the twenty-third toured the forts in the harbor accompanied by Foster. It wasn’t as if the major needed a guide. Anderson had a mystical kinship with this city and its harbor. Indeed, he felt he had an hereditary right to be there to defend it. His father had defended Fort Moultrie before him, against the British in the Revolutionary War, and been imprisoned there.21

  At Molino del Rey Foster and Anderson had lain within yards of one another, both with bloody wounds. However, Foster knew the new commander only by reputation. Anderson had graduated from West Point in 1825, served on General Scott’s staff in the Mexican War, fought in the Indian wars in Florida, and in the Black Hawk War in Illinois. Foster sized him up as they toured the harbor together. He saw a slight, slender man, three or four inches shorter than himself. He would be about fifty-five years old now, nearly twenty years Foster’s senior, a handsome man with short-cropped hair turning iron gray. He was slim and soldierly with sloping shoulders—it was said a tailor found him easy to fit. His complexion was swarthy, his forehead high and narrow, his eyes hazel, his nose well formed, and his face clean-shaven. He spoke with a rich, melodious voice and abundant gestures. Foster was very likely struck, as everybody was, by his agreeable and gentlemanly manner. One got the impression that here was a quiet, dignified, but firm and decisive man.22

  Anderson was not happy with what he saw in the harbor. Moultrie was in a dilapidated condition, the garrison was absurdly undermanned, all the munitions were in a state of chaos, Charlestonians were hysterical, and the authority of the U.S. government was likely to be assailed at any moment.

  That night he wrote the war department. The garrison is so weak, he reported, as to invite an attack, which is “openly and publicly threatened.” He urged that Sumter, now empty but for workmen, and Castle Pinckney, now manned only by the ordnance sergeant, be garrisoned immediately if the government intends to keep command of the harbor. The clouds, he wrote, “are threatening, and the storm may break upon us at any moment.” He warned that “if we neglect … to strengthen ourselves, she [South Carolina] will, unless these works are surrendered on their first demand, most assuredly immediately attack us.” He sought special instructions, for this was more than just a military problem.23

  Secretary of War Floyd, of course, preferred things as they were. Anderson was not to be reinforced. While work on Sumter and Pinckney were to continue, neither fort was to be garrisoned. Floyd believed that to send more soldiers to Charleston would unnecessarily irritate the South Carolinians. In December, the secretary sent Major Don Carlos Buell from the war department with these verbal instructions: Anderson was to hold the forts in the harbor without any more garrison and if attacked, to defend them to the last extremity.24

  But Floyd didn’t really mean for Anderson to take these instructions literally. In a confidential letter delivered a few days later he said, in effect, that if attacked Anderson should give up the forts. You might infer from the verbal instructions, the secretary figuratively whispered in Anderson’s ear, “that you are required to make a vain and useless sacrifice of your own life and the lives of the men under your command, upon a mere point of honor. This is far from the President’s intentions. You are to exercise a sound military discretion on this subject.”

  It was neither expected nor desired, Floyd whispered, “that you should expose your own life or that of your men in a hopeless conflict in defense of these forts. If they are invested or attacked by a force so superior that resistance would, in your judgment, be a useless waste of life, it will be your duty to yield to necessity, and make the best terms in your power.” This, he assured Anderson, “will be the conduct of an honorable, brave, and humane officer, and you will be fully justified in such action.”25

  So that was it. Anderson was to avoid every act that would needlessly upset and provoke the South Carolinians, and to take no position that could be construed as hostile unless absolutely necessary. At the same time he was to hold the forts in the harbor and if attacked defend himself to the last extremity—but not really.

  None of this, of course, was any help at all. “If I had been here before the commencement of expenditures on this work [Fort Moultrie], and supposed that this garrison would not be increased,” Anderson grumbled, “I should have advised its withdrawal, with the exception of a small guard, and its removal to Fort Sumter, which so perfectly commands the harbor and this fort.” But he began to make do with what he had.26

  It was clear to Anderson that there was “a romantic desire urging the South Carolinians to have possession of this work.…”27 Therefore, besides ordering all the sand removed from about the walls of Fort Moultrie, he had heavy gates erected to keep out the romantics, and a small manhole cut for people to crawl in and out through. It was rumored in Charleston that
two thousand riflemen had been detailed to occupy the roofs of the houses that crowded about the fort. This troubled Anderson and outraged Captain Doubleday, his second in command, who was for burning every house around to the ground.28

  Anderson wasn’t prepared to go that far. But he wanted to do something. He wrote Washington again. The sand hills commanding the fort to the east must be leveled, he told the war department. Would doing this be construed as initiating a collision? Under what circumstances would he be justified in setting fire to or destroying the houses near the fort that “afford dangerous shelter to an enemy?” Would he be justified in firing on an armed body approaching the fort? The answers that came back were no, don’t level the dunes, and no, don’t destroy the houses. As for an approaching enemy, ask them what they intend, warn them to keep off, and if they don’t respond, then it is their own fault what happens next.29

  OK, said Anderson grudgingly, he wouldn’t level the dunes or destroy the houses until convinced an attack was underway. But he warned the war department that both the hills with their sparse, stunted vegetation and the houses were lethal havens for sharpshooters who might in a few hours, “with ordinary good luck, pick off the major part of my little band, if we stand to our guns.”30

  Anderson told his superiors that the government must decide, the sooner the better, what he should do when South Carolina secedes, as now appeared inevitable. Was he to surrender the forts or not? If not, then they had better send him reinforcements now, or vessels of war. The South Carolinians, he said “are making every preparation (drilling nightly, &c) for the fight which they say must take place, and insist on our not doing anything.” Conceding in advance that he probably couldn’t expect much help from Washington, he would “go steadily on, preparing for the worst, trusting hopefully in the God of Battles to guard and guide me in my course.”31

  That was also all the guidance Foster was getting at the moment. He was peppering his superiors at the Corps of Engineers in Washington with as many questions as Anderson was putting to the war department. There were things he also needed to know: If Fort Sumter was to be risked against the chances of attack, he needed to know that so he could adjust his program against its possible loss. If not, he had to prepare to defend it until help arrived. If the garrison at Moultrie was to be transferred, he needed to know that too, so he could stop spending all that money to make it defensible.32

  Foster tended not to be as politically sensitive as he might be. He was intent only on getting the job done. When he first arrived he had hired laborers locally, all of them secessionists to the core. He sent to Baltimore for 150 stonemasons, many of whom had worked for him there. They were excellent workmen, but in some cases questionable Unionists. So all of the Charleston laborers and much of the imported help from Baltimore were sympathetic with the southern cause; many of them came wearing secessionist badges. This disgusted Doubleday. In his view Foster was unwittingly infesting the garrison with a gang of Judases.33

  Foster was also experiencing an even worse embarrassment at the Charleston arsenal than Seymour had a few weeks earlier. Soon after arriving, Foster ordered forty muskets from the arsenal, with which to arm his workmen. He believed that given the overheated situation, both the workmen and the valuable public property at Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney needed protecting.

  Several weeks passed and Foster heard nothing more of his requisition. On December 17, he went to the arsenal to pick up two other muskets he had been authorized to draw. The storekeeper argued that he had no authority to issue the two muskets, but there was that old order for forty guns, which were now there and available for delivery. Would Foster like them?

  Foster hauled them away, not stopped this time by angry townspeople as Seymour had been. He issued two of the muskets to the ordnance sergeants at Sumter and Pinckney and stored the remainder in the magazines at the two forts. Shortly after, he received an urgent note from the storekeeper at the arsenal. The weapons he had just issued Foster were causing such great excitement in the city, the storekeeper said, that he felt obliged to pledge his word that they would be back in the arsenal by the next night. Would Foster please return them immediately?

  Foster objected. “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 circumstances,” he wrote to the chief of engineers in Washington. “It would place the two forts under my charge at the mercy of a mob.… 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.”

  It appeared that nobody had acquainted Foster with John Floyd, who was the government. On December 20, at 2:00 in the morning, a telegram arrived from the secretary. “I have just received a telegraphic dispatch informing me that you have removed forty muskets from Charleston Arsenal to Fort Moultrie,” the telegram said curtly. “If you have removed any arms, return them instantly.”

  Foster returned them that morning, but was still steaming when he wrote the chief of engineers later that day. “The order of the Secretary of War of last night I must consider as decisive upon the question of any efforts on my part to defend Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney,” he fumed. “The defense now can only extend to keeping the gates closed and shutters fastened, and must cease when these are forced.”34

  Anderson meanwhile was about to make a move that would upset the secretary far more than Foster’s forty muskets.

  The situation at Fort Moultrie was making Anderson exceedingly nervous. “When I inform you that my garrison consists of only sixty effective men,” he wrote a friend on Christmas Eve, “that we are in a very indefensible work … you will at once see that if attacked in force, headed by any one not a simpleton, there is scarcely a probability of our being able to hold out long enough to enable our friends to come to our succor.”35

  The old fort was under the constant, suspicious, and watchful eyes of hostile Charleston. Bands of secessionists roamed nearby day and night. The garrison was so worn out watching them, that Louisa Seymour and Mary Doubleday had on one occasion relieved their husbands on guard duty so they could get some rest.36

  All of this was more than Anderson could stand, and it had only gotten worse since South Carolina had seceded on December 20, as threatened. Since then steamers from Charleston had stood constantly off Fort Sumter to prevent any troops, other than workmen, from being landed. A clash of some kind seemed imminent. Anderson wished to God he “only had men enough here to man fully my guns.”37

  Even before South Carolina seceded, Anderson had made up his mind to abandon Moultrie and move his little garrison to Fort Sumter. Foster nearly had the place ready for occupancy, and could soon make it fit for defense. It was infinitely safer for his command than Moultrie. He could defend himself there indefinitely, even with his pathetically small command.38

  It had to be carefully and cautiously done. Anderson therefore told nobody of his plans, not even his officers. He had hoped to do it on Christmas Day, when Charleston would be celebrating and its guard would be down. But it rained hard all that day; the move would have to wait.39 On Christmas night he joined his fellow officers—and several Charlestonian secessionists—at a party at John and Mary Foster’s house in Moultrieville. Nobody present had any idea of the bombshell he planned to drop the next day.40

  In the morning he told his engineering officers to ready their boats—he was moving the command that evening. He ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant Hall, to pack the camp baggage and the wives and children of the soldiers in three chartered schooners on the pretext of removing them from the path of a possible conflict. This would excite no suspicions. Hall was to lay off old Fort Johnson across the harbor with his cargo and wait for a signal to land at Sumter.41

  Seymour had been suspecting something like this. He had packed up his personal property, and sent Louisa off only that afternoon to stay with friends in Charleston.42 Doubleday, the other company commander, however, suspected nothing
. Earlier that day Anderson had given up his own mess and come to live with him. That should have told Doubleday something. But he still suspected nothing until that evening when he went to the parapet to tell Anderson tea was ready. The major turned to him and said, “Captain, in twenty minutes you will leave this fort with your company for Fort Sumter.”43

  Surprised, but delighted, Doubleday rushed to rouse his men. He then ran to his house to tell his wife that there might be fighting and that she must get out of the fort as soon as possible and take refuge behind the sand hills. Twenty minutes later Doubleday and his men joined Seymour and his company for the short quarter-mile march from the fort to the landing at Moultrieville. It was near sunset and the siesta hour, and the Charleston militia were taking their late afternoon naps. The command slipped through without being noticed. Waiting for them at the wharf with two boats were Foster’s two young engineering officers, Lieutenants G. W. Snyder and R. K. Meade. “Captain,” Snyder said to Doubleday, “those boats are for your men.”44