1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [82]
This last course of action, peaceful surrender, was the one that nearly all of Sumter’s officers and men—and its commander—expected Lincoln ultimately to choose. Anderson felt that he had honorably held the fort throughout the worst of the secession mania. Now, he wrote to a friend, tempers in the seceding states would gradually cool, and, barring any rash federal action, “our errant sisters, thus leaving us as friends, may at some future time be won back by conciliation and justice.” There would be no disgrace in lowering his flag to the forces of secession, now that the mob of local roughnecks shaking their fists at Moultrie in December had become a well-equipped army of seven thousand men, commanded by one of the ablest siege tacticians in America, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. In fact, the dapper little Louisianan had studied artillery technique at West Point under no less an authority than Major Anderson himself, and the two men had remained warm friends.10
It was the most gentlemanly of sieges. Arriving in Charleston at the beginning of March, Beauregard had sent several cases of cigars and fine brandy over to Anderson as tokens of his undiminished esteem. (Anderson, mindful as ever of military etiquette, promptly returned them untouched.) When the two commanders had occasion to exchange messages, their notes were addressed “My dear General” and “My dear Major.” A sympathetic lady of Charleston sent over a bouquet of early-blooming Carolina jasmine whose scent delighted the men, reminding them of “the woods and freedom,” the surgeon Crawford wrote.11
South Carolina’s governor, Francis Pickens, was not quite so courtly and obliging, but he did allow the garrison at Sumter to communicate with the outside world, with almost no interference. Visitors came and went, including one of Mathew Brady’s photographers, who assembled Anderson and his officers for a group portrait. The daily mail boat from town brought confidential communiqués from the War Department inquiring about the military situation. It brought letters and small packages from home, and a large crate of prime-quality tobacco from an admiring merchant in New York. (Anderson did not send this back.) It brought requests from men and women all over the North for autographs, photos, and locks of hair, which the officers did their best to supply. It even brought emissaries from Washington: White House aides and War Department adjutants, interviewing, inspecting, inquiring, but offering no instructions. Beauregard and the Carolinians allowed these envoys to pass, believing that their reports would only hasten Lincoln’s inevitable decision to surrender the fort peacefully.12
One day, the boat brought Mrs. Anderson. Worried by the lack of mail from her husband, the major’s wife had traveled by train from New York to see him, and received permission from the rebel authorities because, as Doubleday wryly put it, “she had many influential relatives among the Secessionists.” She stayed only two hours, barely long enough to assure herself that her husband was safe and to take a meal together, but with her had come another visitor who would remain for three months. Peter Hart, a tough former sergeant, had accompanied the major as his orderly all through the Mexican War. Remembering her husband’s fondness for him, the resourceful Eba Anderson had decided to track him down. She found Hart serving as a New York City policeman in a remote district of Upper Manhattan—just above Twenty-sixth Street—and somehow persuaded him to join the defenders at Sumter. The rebels refused to let Hart stay, but Mrs. Anderson not being a lady to take no for an answer, they finally