1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [89]
The most marked change to be observed on that dispiriting morning was in the major himself. The officers were not privy to his official correspondence with Washington, but for days they had noticed Anderson’s usual stoicism sinking into depression. He seemed even grayer and more melancholy than ever, as if oppressed by some new and secret care.
The following day brought a sudden change in the weather, a strange new portent—and an explanation. The ninth of April dawned fine and clear. Against the rooftops of the city, three miles distant, a fresh skyline seemed to blossom as hundreds of sails unfurled along Charleston’s wharves. Not long afterward, the men at Sumter watched the departing armada pass them: more than forty merchant ships running free before the northwest breeze toward open water, their sails like so many white petals, each curled edge sharp against the blue. Charleston Harbor was left almost empty. “It was a beautiful sight I assure you,” wrote Crawford in his last letter to his brother, a letter that would never be delivered.38
It was not many hours after this that Anderson gathered his officers and shared his private burden of almost two full days. He had received the long-awaited orders from Washington, in the form of a terse six-sentence communiqué from Simon Cameron, the new secretary of war. A relief expedition was already on its way with provisions and reinforcements. The garrison was to hold out, if at all possible, until its arrival. And Cameron conveyed a message from Lincoln himself: “It is not, however, the intention of the President to subject your command to any danger or hardship beyond what, in your judgment, would be usual in military life; and he has entire confidence that you will act as becomes a patriot and soldier, under all circumstances.”39
At long last, the Kentuckian in the White House had made his wishes known to the Kentuckian in Fort Sumter. What unfolded in the coming days would depend, more than anything else, on these two men.
AS ANDERSON’S MEN were counting their crumbs one night during the last week of March, President and Mrs. Lincoln were hosting their first official dinner at the White House. Anxious about Washington protocol, they had sought the discreet coaching of Secretary Seward and his able staff—and by all accounts this initial Republican foray into formal entertaining was competent enough, if not exactly splendid. The gaslight and candles had been artfully arranged to conceal the State Dining Room’s shabbiness, and the air was perfumed by fresh spring blossoms in gilt-silver vases, a refreshing change from the artificial flowers preferred by the previous administration. Mrs. Lincoln appeared, arrayed in garish silk, her plump hand clutching a fan that she fluttered energetically—coquettishly, she seemed to think. William Howard Russell, the acerbic correspondent for the London Times, peered at her through his wire-rimmed spectacles, taking mental notes on every detail of this frontier queen’s curious mannerisms. (They were, he would tell his readers, “stiffened … by the consciousness that her position requires her to be something more than plain Mrs. Lincoln, the wife of the Illinois lawyer.”)
With the exception of Russell, the guest list was, as might have been expected, an unadventurous one: the entire cabinet was in attendance, seated stiffly in their drab frock coats like a conclave of Methodist parsons, their ranks enlivened only by twenty-one-year-old Kate Chase, the treasury secretary’s captivating daughter. The menu, too, was conservative: imported wines accompanied fish prepared à la française. In the end, it was the president himself who set his guests at ease, resting his bony elbows on the table and treating everyone to a comical yarn about a drunken Irish coachman he’d met in his days as a young lawyer riding the circuit.40
Only one of the administration’s senior counselors was conspicuously absent: General Scott, the hero of 1812 and 1848, and typically a fixture at such occasions, his monumental