1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [99]
The envoys returned to their boat. Just before they departed, Anderson called after them with a final question: “Will General Beauregard open his batteries without further notice to me?”
One of the three men, Colonel James Chesnut of the provisional Confederate Army—until recently, the Hon. James Chesnut of the United States Senate—hesitated a moment before replying. “I think not,” he finally said. “No, I can say to you that he will not, without giving you further notice.”
Then Chesnut and the others stepped aboard and the slave oarsmen pushed off, carrying word to General Beauregard of his old professor’s intransigence.
NOTICE CAME IN THE SMALL HOURS of the night. It can be found today among Anderson’s papers in the Library of Congress: a single elegant sheet of lavender-blue notepaper, neatly creased where it was once folded between the gloved fingers of a Confederate adjutant. It reads:
April 12, 1861. 3:20 a.m.
Sir—By the authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.
We have the honor to be, very respectfully,
your obedient servants,
James Chesnut, Jr., Aide de Camp
Stephen D. Lee, Captain, C.S. Army, Aide de Camp 81
After receiving this missive, Anderson went to tell his officers and men—who had been anxiously awaiting news—that all except the sentries should return to their beds and try to get some sleep. It was clear that Sumter’s defenders could accomplish little until sunrise, since the garrison had no lights; the fort’s lamp oil and candles had long since run out. After breakfast, such as it might be, they would begin to return fire. The only other order he gave was to raise the fort’s flag, which was duly run up its staff into the blackness above. But most of the officers and soldiers waited quietly on the ramparts to see the war begin.82
Beauregard’s first shot, the signal shot, arrived ten minutes after its appointed time. Private John Thompson was one of the men who stayed on the parapet to watch it explode overhead like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July. Later, his clearest memory of the moment was glimpsing his comrades’ faces in that quick flash of light: no one seemed afraid, Thompson wrote, but “something like an expression of awe crept over the features of everyone.”
In the minutes that followed, one battery after another opened up around the harbor, until nineteen of them were hammering away at the fort, sending solid rounds and mortar shells flying in from all sides. The Confederate artillerymen were mostly shooting high, as inexperienced gunners usually did: “Shot and shell went screaming over Sumter,” said Sergeant James Chester, “as if an army of devils were swooping around it.” But they would eventually find their range.83
Abner Doubleday was among the few men to choose safety over scenery, no matter how awe-inspiring. He stayed in bed, in the makeshift but protected quarters he had improvised within one of the fort’s deep powder magazines.84
The second shot of the Civil War crashed into the masonry at what seemed a foot away from Doubleday’s head—“in very unpleasant proximity to my right ear,” he recalled much later. Big patches of plaster cracked off the ceiling and fell in clouds of dust. The chamber shuddered again as another shell struck near the ventilation shaft, sending a burst of hot smoke roiling in, and Doubleday looked with some alarm at the crates of gunpowder stacked along one wall. He noticed, too, that some of the black powder had been carelessly spilled on the floor, where any stray spark might ignite it. The captain prudently dressed and went down early to breakfast, which consisted of tepid water and a little of the half-rancid pork.85
Clouds hung low in the gray sky, and mist over the water, dimming the faint rays of dawn. At long last, enough light shone