1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [245]
93. Chepesiuk, “Eye Witness,” pp. 274–75. “I only wish we had a chance to give the rascals hell,” wrote another enlisted man. “We are all right, if old Lincoln will only have the backbone to stand by us.” New York Herald, Apr. 5, 1861.
94. Instruction for Heavy Artillery, Prepared by a Board of Officers, for Use of the Army of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1863), pp. 54–59; David Detzer, Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War (New York, 2001), pp. 260–64; Mike Ryan, “The Historic Guns of Forts Sumter and Moultrie” (National Park Service study, 1997); Oliver Lyman Spaulding Jr., “The Bombardment of Fort Sumter, 1861,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, vol. 1, pp. 200–01.
95. Doubleday, Reminiscences, pp. 148–49.
96. Baltimore Sun, Apr. 16, 1861: F. L. Parker, “The Battle of Fort Sumter as Seen from Morris Island,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 62, no. 2 (April 1961), p. 67; Doubleday, Reminiscences, p. 151, Chester, “Inside Sumter in ’61,” pp. 66–68.
97. Boston Daily Advertiser, Apr. 24, 1861; Albany Journal, Apr. 19, 1861. In describing the battle, I have used only newspaper reports that were based on descriptions by eyewitnesses and that accord with other accounts. The Albany Journal article, for instance, is based on a clearly authentic interview with Doubleday immediately after the surrender.
98. Baltimore Sun, April 16, 1861; Chepesiuk, “Eye Witness,” pp. 277–78; Thompson and Wainwright, Confidential Correspondence, pp. 32–33.
99. SWC Diary, Apr. 12, 1861, SWC Papers; OR I, vol. 1, pp. 20–21.
100. Chester, “Inside Sumter in ’61,” pp. 54; 70–71.
101. Chepesiuk, “Eye Witness,” p. 278.
102. OR I, pp. 21–22; Chester, “Inside Sumter in ’61,” p. 71; Doubleday, Reminiscences, pp. 156–57; Albany Journal, Apr. 19, 1861.
103. Doubleday, Reminiscences, p. 158.
104. Charleston Courier, Apr. 13, 1861, in Baltimore Sun, Apr. 16, 1861.
105. Thompson, pp. 278–79; Crawford, p. 439; Chester, “Inside Sumter in ’61,” p. 72; SWC Diary, Apr. 13, 1861, SWC Papers.
106. Crawford, History of the Fall, pp. 437–38; Doubleday, Reminiscences, p. 159; May Spencer Ringold and W. Gourdin Young, “William Gourdin Young and the Wigfall Mission—Fort Sumter, April 13, 1861,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 73, no. 1 (Jan. 1972), pp. 27–33. While Wigfall and the other Confederate were distracted, the three slaves, quite sensibly, pushed their boat off and set out again for the relative safety of Fort Moultrie. The private, William Gourdin Young, noticed their departure just in time to order them back onshore at gunpoint.
107. Chepesiuk, “Eye Witness,” p. 279.
108. Ibid., pp. 278–79; Crawford, History of the Fall, pp. 439–41; SWC Diary, April 13, 1861, SWC Papers; Chester, “Inside Sumter in ’61,” pp. 72–73. The separate accounts given by Thompson, Crawford (who recounted the story twice), and Chester, who all claimed to be present for Wigfall’s arrival, coincide in most particulars but offer slightly different sequences of events and attribute somewhat different words to Wigfall, Anderson, and Thompson. My own account combines elements from all four versions but relies most heavily on Thompson’s letter to his father and Crawford’s diary entry, both written shortly after the surrender.
Wigfall himself told a rather different version of the story several days later, when he led Russell of the London Times on a tour of the vanquished fort. Wigfall recounted that the Yankee private who had first spotted him—possibly Thompson—was “pretty well scared when he saw me, but I told him not to be alarmed, but to take me to the officers. There they were, huddled up in that corner behind the brickwork, for our shells were tumbling into the yard, and bursting like—” (here the senator inserted some “strange expletives”). “I am sorry to say,” Russell noted, “our distinguished friend had just been paying his respects sans bornes to Bacchus or Bourbon, for he was decidedly unsteady in his gait and thick in speech.” William H. Russell, My Diary