1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [79]
But in Columbus, like everywhere else in the country, each day’s news brought fresh intimations that the momentary stasis could not last much longer. Headlines in the Ohio State Journal told of the worsening confrontation in Charleston Harbor, as well as another at Fort Pickens in Florida, also surrounded by Confederate troops. Which side would break the standoff—and would it concede peace or embrace war?
On April 13, a gray Saturday morning, the Ohio senate was in session as usual. A few spectators were in the gallery, including some women’s rights advocates, still pressing their case. Today, however, the senate would be distracted from progressive aspirations and mundane matters alike. It had just managed to pass legislation authorizing the payment of bounties for killing blackbirds in Ottawa County—and was preparing, in desultory fashion, for the fortieth ballot on a bill locating a proposed state penitentiary—when a senator came rushing in from the lobby with a message for the chair. “Mr. President,” he exclaimed, “the telegraph announces that the secessionists are bombarding Fort Sumter.”
The legislators stood in stunned silence, absorbing the news. But the hush was shattered when, from the spectators’ gallery, came a woman’s fierce whoop of joy. The men looked up, startled—almost, one later remembered, as if the enemy themselves were in their midst.
It was Abby Kelley Foster. “Glory to God!” she cried.106
Fort Sumter under the Confederate flag, April 14, 1861 (photo credit 3.2)
* * *
*The myth of Garfield writing simultaneously in Greek and Latin persists into the present day as an old chestnut of presidential trivia. Its origin is that Garfield was ambidextrous, and sometimes showed off for students by signing his name on the chalkboard with both hands at the same time.
*The Republicans’ first nominee, John C. Frémont, in 1856, had been the first bearded presidential candidate in American history.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Shot in the Dark
World take good notice, silver stars have vanished;
Orbs now of scarlet—mortal coals, all aglow,
Dots of molten iron, wakeful and ominous,
On the blue bunting henceforth appear.
—WALT WHITMAN,
“Rise, Lurid Stars” (manuscript fragment, 1861)
Charleston Harbor, April 1861
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN, a single shell announced the war’s beginning.
Something flashed and boomed suddenly ashore. In the fort, men keeping watch saw the projectile coming toward them, arcing clean and high, like a small comet tracing its course among the scattered stars. The night was so still that they could hear—or so they would later tell—the hissing sound it made as it cut through the air. A spray of sparks trailed from the fuse, reflected on the rippled water below, so that not one but two streaks of orange fire seemed to race across the harbor, converging and converging. The ball burst at last above them, right over the ring of parapets, a hundred pounds of metal blown apart from within. Perfectly aimed. An instant of sudden clarity illuminated the bricks, stones, and panes of quivering glass; the silent iron guns; and the flag that hung, barely stirring, on its tall staff.1
Darkness and stillness again. That first shot had been one gun’s signal to the others. Out across the water, all around the harbor, unseen cannons and mortars were being carefully adjusted and aimed. Then the enemy’s full barrage began.
AFTER SO MANY MONTHS of waiting, the standoff at Sumter had been broken finally by an ancient law of siege warfare: the fort’s defenders were being starved out. Major Anderson had been left with 128 mouths to feed—the officers and soldiers themselves, plus several dozen civilian laborers who had remained in the citadel—and precious