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By Root 1753 0

again and again, poking and probing them like a wound: What was the honorable thing to do, not just for his own sake but for his country’s? Could honor permit opening his guns upon his own countrymen, upon the fort his father had defended long ago? Was the honorable course the same as the brave one, or might it be braver to save the nation from civil war, even at the expense of his own reputation? And what would a truly humane man, a devout man, do? How best to avoid the senseless carnage that had so horrified him along the Indian trails of Illinois and among the villages of Mexico?

The thought of Fox’s expedition turned his stomach: that foolish little man and his pathetic tugboats pounded to pieces in the harbor, along with the soldiers and sailors unlucky enough to come under his command. Just a few days before, after receiving the news, Anderson had written to the War Department: “I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced.” He had sent that letter via his friend in Cameron’s office, then asked him not to deliver it. Still, his officers all knew his heart, for they had all been there on the morning of the move to Sumter, when a rebel envoy came to demand an explanation and Anderson told the man ruefully, “In this controversy between the North and the South, my sympathies are entirely with the South. These gentlemen”—here he turned to the group of blue-coated officers—“know it well.”78

And yet those men knew other things about their commander, too. Most of them had been to West Point and had read—had suffered bravely through—Anderson’s manual of field artillery instruction, a book of such intricately crafted dullness that even a few paragraphs made the unfortunate cadet’s head spin and his eyeballs ache:

At the first command the cannoneers run to their respective places, and stand facing the boxes upon which they are to mount. The gunner and No. 5 in rear of the gun limber, No. 6 on the right of the gunner. Nos. 1 and 2 in rear of the caisson limber, No. 7 on the left of No. 1, Nos. 3 and 4 in front of the centre box of the caisson, No. 8 on the right of No. 3. The gunner and Nos. 2 and 3 seize the handles with the right hand, and step upon the stocks with the left foot, and Nos. 5, 1, and 4 seize the handles with the left hand, and step upon the stocks with the right foot.

At the second command, the gunner and Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 spring into their seats, the gunners and Nos. 5, 1, and 2 with their backs to the front.

No. 8 then springs into his seat in the same manner as No. 3, and Nos. 6 and 7 step in rear of their boxes, place their hands upon the knees of the men already mounted, step upon the stocks with their nearest feet, and springing up, step over the boxes and take their seats. The gunner and Nos. 5, 1, and 2 then face about to the front by throwing their legs outward over the handles.…

… and so on, and on, and on, through 214 different maneuvers, each of them, and no others whatsoever, approved by the secretary of war, “with a view to insure uniformity throughout the army.” These maneuvers were illustrated by neat copperplate diagrams just as devoid of human volition, with every gun drawn as a little cross, each man as a squarish dot.79

Could the author of such a treatise—whatever his personal feelings, whatever his inner pain—possibly strike his colors without returning fire? One might as well ask cannoneers Nos. 5, 1, and 4 to seize the handles of the gun carriage with their right hands instead of their left ones, or tell the squarish dots to abandon their little crosses and scamper off the margins of the page!

“The red tape of military duty,” John Hay would later sneer, “was all that bound his heart from its traitorous impulses.”80 Though it may also have reflected Lincoln’s private views, this was unfair. For, as Anderson stood before his officers, the men who had lived with him at close quarters for the past six months, none doubted that in the end he would fight.

Reemerging from his quarters, Sumter’s commander addressed the Confederate officers. “I shall