by Bruce Catton
It would not appear just yet, however. First Seward would have to extricate himself and his government from the tangle that he had been so industriously creating, and before this could be done, there would be a windy mess, which, if it did not actually help to start the war, at least had a good deal to do with the way in which the war was started. Seward was badly overextended. He had made unequivocal promises, at a time when he and others supposed that their fulfillment would rest entirely with him, and he was abruptly learning that he could not deliver what he had said he would deliver. Greatly deceiving himself, he had deceived others, and the memory of the deception would linger for many years, adding to a bitterness and misunderstanding that would have been almost too strong even without this final addition.
Meanwhile the whole business meant delay and a general slowing-down, and the administration was at last aware that it was in a desperate race with time. Major Anderson could keep his flag flying for two more weeks, which meant that Lincoln had precisely a fortnight to show that his inaugural address, his administration policy, and he himself had to be taken seriously. When Major Anderson hauled down his flag, everything would be over—unless, before the flag was struck, some imposing and unmistakable act made clear to everyone the government’s fixed determination to do what it had said it was going to do. This act might have taken place at Fort Pickens; could not now, because the new expedition could not possibly reach the place before Major Anderson’s time expired. Whatever would be done must be done at Fort Sumter, and unless it were done more deftly than there was any reason to think possible, the mere doing of it would cause a war.
3: “If You Have No Doubt …”
Secretary Seward grossly deceived Jefferson Davis’s representatives, but they at least met him halfway. They were men prepared to be deceived. Believing firmly that any reasonable man must eventually concede the justice of the Southern cause and the independence of the Confederate states, they would find plausible any words that hinted they were right. Reaching Washington shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration, they took it for granted that both Seward and Cameron meant to follow a peace policy and they assumed that these men would carry Lincoln with them. As early as March 6 Commissioner M. J. Crawford informed Secretary Toombs that “the President himself is really not aware of the condition of the country and his Secretaries of State and War are to open the difficulties and dangers to him in cabinet today.”1
On March 11 the commissioners—Mr. Crawford, Mr. Roman, and Mr. Forsyth—made formal application for a meeting with Secretary Seward, at which they hoped to arrange for the surrender of Fort Sumter and the recognition of Confederate independence. Seward of course could not see them without tacitly admitting that they somehow represented something which was entitled to deal with the Secretary of State. He talked instead with their emissary, Senator R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, and he wrote a memorandum, addressed to no one, which seems to have reached the commissioners’ hands. In it Seward was quite starchy. The Secretary of State, he wrote, saw in the events that had recently taken place in the South, “not a rightful and accomplished revolution and an independent nation, with an established government, but rather a perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement to the inconsiderate purposes of an unjustifiable and unconstitutional aggression upon the rights and authority vested in the Federal government.”2
Having delivered this message, Senator Hunter retired from the scene. His place as go-between was taken by the eminent Justice Campbell, who had talked so earnestly (and so sensibly) with Seward a few weeks earlier about the absurdity of letting the slavery quarrel develop into war. Campbell quickly found that despite those stiff words about unjustifiable and unconstitutional aggression, Seward was extremely reasonable. The commissioners had been in town no more than a week before they were convinced that Fort Sumter was going to be surrendered. They were convinced because Seward had flatly and without qualification told Campbell that this was going to happen.
Campbell talked with Seward on March 15—the day on which Lincoln had asked the members of his cabinet to give him their written opinions regarding the advisability of provisioning Fort Sumter. Speaking as one old friend to another, Campbell remarked that he was about to write to Jefferson Davis. What should he tell him?
“You may say to him,” said Seward, “that before that letter reaches him”—here Seward broke off to ask him how long it took to get a letter from Washington to Montgomery. Three days, he was told. Seward then went on, his promise made all the more convincing because he had interrupted himself to ask that little question—“you may say to him that before that letter reaches him, the telegraph will have informed him that Sumter will have been evacuated.”3
This was as explicit as anything could be, and the word was passed along. When the telegraph failed to convey the information Seward had said it would convey, the aggressive Robert Toombs grew impatient, and the commissioners soothed him with a confident message: “If there is faith in man we may rely on the assurances we have here as to the status. Time is essential to a peaceful issue of this mission. In the present position of affairs precipitation is war.” They also telegraphed innocently to Beauregard, asking if Fort Sumter had been surrendered yet.4
Beauregard, who never appears to have taken a great deal of stock in the stories that were coming out of Washington, of course replied that there had been no surrender. Back to Seward went Justice Campbell. Seward assured him that the resolution to abandon the place had passed the cabinet, and that its execution was up to the President; he himself did not know just what had caused the delay. The next day Seward told Campbell that the policy was a hard one, opposed by many influential Republicans, but that the decision stood. The fort would be given up; also, there would be no change in the status of things at Fort Pickens.
Monday, April 1, at last. The cabinet has reversed itself, the plan for the relief of Fort Pickens has been drawn up and approved, and Seward has given the President that memorandum concerning what ought to be done and who ought to be doing it; and Justice Campbell comes once more to talk with Seward. Campbell has had an inquiry from Governor Pickens, brought on by the governor’s recent chat with Ward Lamon; Pickens wants to know what the latest word about Fort Sumter may be.
… There is perceptible here a faint change in the wind, which Justice Campbell hardly noticed at the time but thought about later. Seward was as smooth and jaunty as ever, but his promises were just a little narrower. There was no design to reinforce Fort Sumter, he insisted; Campbell could tell Governor Pickens that although the President might indeed desire to send reinforcements, he would not do so. Campbell replied that the people of South Carolina, the governor no less than everybody else, were notoriously touchy. If they learned that Lincoln even wanted to send help to Major Anderson, they might start shooting. Seward at once said that he would run right over and see the President. Justice Campbell was to wait for him.
After “some minutes,” as Campbell remembered it, Seward came back and wrote out a message which, he said, Campbell could properly send off to the governor of South Carolina. The message read: “I am satisfied the Government will not undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor Pickens.” Either because he was satisfied with this or because he believed that it was the best he could get, the Justice departed. He still had no notion that anyone was being deceitful. Years later, however, he wrote that he finally came to believe that Seward in all of their talks “was deliberately and intentionally false.”5
It was a curious business, that April 1 conversation. Whether Seward, in his brief absence from his office, actually saw the President; whether, if he did see him, he then learned that his bid to take over control of the government had been rejected; whether, seeing Lincoln or not seeing him, he had begun to realize that the policy in regard to Fort Sumter was about to take a right-angle turn—to these questions there is no certain answer. But the promise he finally gave Campbell that day was not at all the promise he had been reci
ting so convincingly all through the preceding fortnight. Until now, Seward had been saying that Fort Sumter would be given up: now he was merely saying that if the government decided not to give it up, it would promptly tell the governor of South Carolina. If the Confederate authorities had studied the contrast, they might have seen in it something profoundly ominous. Whatever Seward may have intended, he had given what amounted to a clear warning that something drastic was about to happen.
The final decision had not yet been made: or, if made, had not been committed to paper; but rumors were beginning to circulate. After all, the army and navy people in New York were preparing two expeditions, one to be sent to Fort Pickens, the other to stand by for possible use at Fort Sumter, and the news was getting around. The Confederate commissioners passed the rumors on to Toombs, saying that “the war wing presses on the President”; then, having possibly received some echo of Seward’s amazing proposal for a foreign war to take off the heat at home, they reported that “high circles” in the capital believed that the preparations were aimed at Spain, “on account of the Dominican affair.” Not being completely daft, they added that of course the expedition which was fitting out might be ordered to the Confederate coast: “Hence we would say strengthen the defenses at the mouths of the Mississippi.”6
Somewhere between April 1 and April 4, Abraham Lincoln made up his mind. He would fulfill the pledge in his inaugural, and he would fulfill it actively, not passively: that is, he would take his stand at Fort Sumter. He had won a majority of the cabinet over to his way of thinking, he had shown his Secretary of State who was boss, and the time for drift and reflection was over. On April 4 Lincoln called Gustavus Fox to the White House and gave him the news.
Fox had been in New York, making preliminary arrangements for the Fort Sumter expedition but getting no orders about it, and he had returned to Washington to see what was going to happen. When he reached the White House he was taken to President Lincoln, who told him that the government would definitely send supplies to Major Anderson and that Fox was the man to take them there. A special messenger, said Lincoln, was going down to give Governor Pickens due notice, and to tell him that no troops would be landed if the delivery of the provisions was not opposed; the messenger, said the President, would reach Charleston long before Fox could get there. Lincoln also gave Fox formal orders from Secretary of War Cameron: Fox was to put supplies and soldiers aboard ship at New York and go to the entrance of Charleston harbor, where he was to try to put rations into Fort Sumter. If armed forces opposed him, he was to report to the senior United States naval officer present, and this officer would have orders from Secretary Welles to use his entire force to batter his way into the harbor. When this had been done, Fox was to land both troops and supplies. A message was going to Major Anderson over Cameron’s signature telling him what was being attempted and ordering him to hold out, if he could, until the relief expedition arrived. There was a qualifying sentence saying that a complete, last-ditch-last-man resistance was not expected of him; the major was authorized to surrender if necessary to save the lives of his command and himself.
Action was what Fox had been wanting and now it was going to start, but he felt obliged to point out to the President that they were cutting things rather fine. Anderson had said he could not possibly hold out beyond April 15. Fox had to go to New York, charter at least one steamer, get it properly fueled and supplied, load it with soldiers and army freight, and then steam 632 miles from Sandy Hook to Charleston. He was not sure there would be time enough. Lincoln told him to do the best he could, and explained about the naval arrangements. Secretary Welles was sending down the warships Powhatan, Pocahontas, and Pawnee, along with the revenue cutter Harriet Lane, which the Treasury Department was making available; these vessels would be cruising off the bar at the entrance to Charleston harbor when Fox got there and would (it was hoped) be powerful enough to force their way into the harbor if force had to be used.7
Fox hurried back to New York, where he chartered the crack liner Baltic and (after losing half a day persuading a resident army colonel that this Fort Sumter business was real) got troops and supplies aboard. He also engaged the tugs Uncle Ben and Yankee, and he would be ready to sail on April 9.
The expedition he was leading had been substantially augmented since he first suggested it. Originally the big idea had been to slip a boatload of provisions into the harbor by a stealthy dash at night, relying on speed and deception to get the supplies to Fort Sumter before the Confederates knew what was up; now all question of surprise was given up, Governor Pickens was being officially notified in advance that the thing was going to be tried, and four warships were going along with orders to open fire if there was any trouble. Clearly enough the entire concept of the operation had changed. A month earlier the underlying idea had been to uphold Major Anderson and his garrison; now it was nothing less than to uphold the breadth and depth of Federal authority over an unbroken Union. The first might have been done by a quick dash with nobody looking; the second would mean nothing unless seen by all the world, and if General Beauregard’s cannon might help call the world’s attention to it, that would be up to General Beauregard. The first had been nothing more than a play for time. This was a frank avowal that time had run out.
Table stakes, in other words. Sending the outrider down to Governor Pickens, Lincoln was shooting the works. He was not forcing a war, but he was serving notice that he would fight rather than back down; more, he was setting the stage in such a way that Jefferson Davis, if he in his turn preferred to fight rather than to back down, would have to shoot first. Lincoln had been plainly warned by Lamon and by Hurlbut that a ship taking provisions to Fort Sumter would be fired on. Now he was sending the ship, with advance notice to the men who had the guns. He was sending warships and soldiers as well, but they would remain in the background; if there was going to be a war it would begin over a boatload of salt pork and crackers—over that, and the infinite overtones which by now were involved. Not for nothing did Captain Fox remark afterward that it seemed very important to Lincoln that South Carolina “should stand before the civilized world as having fired upon bread.”8
By contrast there was the case of Fort Pickens. The program in respect to that fort had not gone smoothly, because Captain Adams insisted that he was still bound by orders which everyone in Washington had overlooked, but the hitch caused by all of this made little difference in the end; a special messenger, Lieutenant John L. Worden, of the navy, was sent down overland with revised orders, Captain Vogdes’s company was landed, more troops and abundant supplies came down from New York just as Captain Meigs had proposed, and by the end of the month the government had 1100 men in Fort Pickens and the danger that Braxton Bragg would sweep the place into the sea was gone forever.9 Fort Pickens got the muscle and the direct action, and Fort Sumter got the careful handling, the worrying, the intricate maneuvering—and, exposed to the first flash of fire, the fuse that led straight to the main magazine.
The Fort Sumter expedition would sail just as soon as Captain Fox had everything in order, and yet somewhere in his mind Lincoln seems to have held a faint hope that some peaceful arrangement might yet be made. The Virginia convention, which might or might not vote the Old Dominion out of the Union, was still in session, and even before Lincoln became President, he had explored the possibility of a deal. To William C. Rives, one of the Virginia delegates, Lincoln had in February offered to abandon Fort Sumter if the convention would adjourn sine die without passing an ordinance of secession. Now, even as he was concluding that the Sumter expedition must go forward, it appears that Lincoln, in one form or another, renewed this offer.
There is a certain mystery that still hangs over most of the things that happened during the first week in April 1861, but it seems reasonably clear that Lincoln got word to Richmond that he would like to talk with some Unionist-minded delegate to the secession convention, and on April 4 John B. Baldwin came to see him. To him, Lincoln apparently r
epeated what he had said to Rives six weeks earlier—he would swap a fort for a state and consider it a good bargain. The deal could not be made: Baldwin was in no condition to bind the secession convention, adjournment could easily be followed by the calling of a new convention, and in studying what passes for a record of the conversation, one gets the feeling that neither man could quite understand the pressures that bore upon the other. About all that can be said with real assurance is that the negotiation, whatever might conceivably have come of it, got nowhere. One is left with a haunting feeling that everyone might have been much better off if this particular avenue had been explored earlier and much more vigorously.10
Meanwhile there was a final, comic-opera mix-up which had no especial effect on the course of history but which does stand as a striking illustration of the strange way in which the administration conducted its business during the first half-dozen weeks of its tenure.
In selecting naval vessels to meet Captain Fox off the entrance to Charleston harbor, Secretary Welles had specified that the steamer Powhatan be flagship of the force, and Powhatan’s skipper, Captain Samuel Mercer, received orders to that effect. Secretary Seward, however, was backing the Fort Pickens expedition, and he wanted Powhatan for this service. Furthermore, he wanted Powhatan commanded by Lieutenant Porter, who was working closely with Captain Meigs in the project. Orders were accordingly prepared relieving Mercer and putting Porter in his place, and Seward took these orders to the White House and got Lincoln’s signature on them. It appears that the President signed without quite realizing what he was signing, and it is wholly certain that Secretary Welles, who supposed that he had full authority to assign warships and officers, knew nothing at all about the business.
