1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [104]
Across the harbor, meanwhile, the sun still shone. Thousands of Charlestonians—“male and female, white and black, young and old,” one observer wrote—were watching the battle from wharves, rooftops, and church steeples. By midday, disappointingly little of the fort was visible: it was as if a volcano had risen from the sea at the center of the harbor, vomiting smoke. All that the spectators could make out through the thick clouds was Sumter’s flag on its tall staff.104
The smoke hid even that flag for a while. When it drifted away once more, the enemy banner—the familiar Stars and Stripes—had disappeared. Cheers rang from the rooftops. All around the harbor, the rebel gunners held their fire. Fort Sumter, they congratulated themselves, had finally struck its colors.
ON THE ISLAND, the air began clearing enough for the battered garrison to continue its fight. Several guns boomed forth defiant once more. But just as Private Thompson and the rest of his gun crew were loading their cannon, they heard a commotion from the adjacent casemate. Cannoneers were seizing muskets and pointing at something, or someone, on the beach just outside the fort. And then—astonishing and absurd—a man’s face appeared, right in the embrasure through which Thompson was about to fire his cannon.
It was the face of a middle-aged gentleman, a bit thick in the jowls, with a black beard that seemed to bristle angrily in all directions and black eyes that flashed with righteous indignation. He was dressed not in a military uniform but in a frock coat and top hat. Gasping with exertion, cursing and swearing, he was now struggling unsuccessfully to pull himself over the sill with one arm, while his other hand awkwardly grasped a sword, a white handkerchief tied to its point. The soldiers, crowding around, held the stranger at bay with their muskets. Was this some sort of rebel trick? The advance guard of an amphibious attack on the fort? No. The bizarre apparition was—though none of the men recognized him—the Honorable Mr. Louis T. Wigfall, lately United States senator from the now seceded state of Texas.105
Fort Sumter had not, in fact, surrendered: a stray shot from the rebels had toppled the flagstaff. Ex-Sergeant Hart and two comrades, at great risk to life and limb, had ventured forth to raise the banner again on a makeshift pole—for which valiant feat they would soon be celebrated by journalists, lithographers, and political orators throughout the Union. But during the brief silencing of the Confederate batteries, Senator Wigfall, smelling glory in the air, had taken it upon himself to set forth from Moultrie in a small rowboat with the goal of personally securing Anderson’s formal capitulation. An unlucky Confederate private and three slaves, whom he had dragooned into service at the oars, accompanied him. By the time Moultrie’s commanding officers noticed what Wigfall was up to and began yelling for him to stop, the boat was already out of earshot. They fired a warning shot across his bow, but still the senator—much to the consternation of his oarsmen—would not turn back. By the time they reached the middle of the channel, the Confederate batteries around the harbor had begun opening fire once more, as had Anderson’s cannons, and the colonel in charge at Moultrie ordered his gunners to sink that “damned politician.”
The politician in question, despite his extensive youthful experience with dueling pistols, found incoming artillery rounds a bit harder to face. Wigfall tied his handkerchief to his sword and stood up in the bow, hoping the gunners would honor his makeshift flag of truce, but managing only to nearly swamp the boat. With shots splashing around them, he and his crew somehow made it safely to the shore, with Sumter under a full-on Confederate barrage. Showers of bricks fell from above as the portly senator clambered over rocks and debris toward the embrasures, sword and handkerchief in hand. No one in the fort had noticed his boat coming.106
“We stubbornly refused him admittance