The other first shots of the war.

   Everyone is familiar with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861.  Confederate forces demanded the return of the property, and Federal forces declined. After word arrived that the Federals were going to reinforce the fort, Confederate forces, on April 12, opened fire. After a thirty-six-hour bombardment, Federal forces surrendered a smoking, partially burned-out fort. This event is widely heralded as the first shot of the war.

   However, what if the war actually started three months earlier, in January 1861?

Fort Barrancas (Florida Memory)

   January 8, 1861 - If Charleston Harbor was ablaze with excitement in March and April 1861, Pensacola Harbor was on fire. There were three forts in Pensacola. All three, Fort Pickens, Fort McRae, and Fort Barrancas, were unoccupied. There was a company of forty-six men at nearby Barrancas. After conferring with Commodore James Armstrong at the nearby naval yard, who promised no help, Lt. Adam Slemmer moved his men into Fort Barrancas, put the guns into working order, established a guard, and on the night of January 8, raised the draw bridge. “About midnight on the eighth a group of men approached the fort and failing to answer when challenged, were fired upon by the guard. The alarm was sounded as the group retreated in the darkness. . . Slemmer doubled the guard and they waited through the night to see if another attempt would be made to take possession of the fort.” The following day Slemmer began to move his small command from Fort Barrancas to Fort Pickens. Florida passed its ordinance of secession the following day.[1]

   January 9, 1861 - Major Robert Anderson’s forces at Fort Sumter were on short on men. When Anderson abandoned Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor on the evening of December 26, 1860, and moved to Fort Sumter, he had eighty men under his command. Seeking to reinforce the Fort Sumter garrison, Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott secretly boarded 200 Federal soldiers into the Star of the West. Except, it was not a secret. The Star of the West left New York Harbor on the evening of January 5. Newspapers, both North and South, were starting to carry the news the following day. Waiting for the day to get light enough to enter the harbor and head to the fort, the Star of the West was spotted by a patrol boat that alerted a masked battery on shore. The battery was manned by cadets from the Citadel. They fired several shots, two hitting the vessel. Gunners at Fort Moultrie aimed their pieces as the Star of the West came into sight, firing a few rounds but doing no damage. With no signal from Fort Sumter, and an unknown vessel heading swiftly in their direction, the Star of the West broke off and headed back out to sea and back to New York.[2]  

Marker in Vicksburg (HMdb)

   January 13, 1861 – Named for its owner, the A.O. Tyler started life as a 180-foot-long, three-side-wheeled packet steamboat that plied the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. With the secession of states bordering the Mississippi River, orders went out to gain control of the waterway to “prevent any hostile expedition from the Northern States descending the river.” Part of the Jackson Artillery was ordered to Vicksburg, and permission given to call out local militia companies. One account says that on the night of January 13 (or maybe January 11), the A.O. Tyler, heading south from Cincinnati, was fired upon, stopped, and searched. It was then allowed to continue on. Another account states that a blank charge was used and had not the A.O. Tyler stopped, a live round would have been used next. Later, the A.O. Tyler was purchased by the Federals and used as a river gunboat.[3]  

   These are just three accounts. There are undoubtedly more waiting to be discovered.

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[1] Taylor, Discovering the Civil War in Florida, 27-28; Coleman and Coleman, Guardians of the Gulf, 39.

[2] Detzer, Allegiance, 152-59.

[3] Rowland, Military History of Mississippi, 35-6; The Louisville Daily Courier, January 21, 1861.

Fighting on both sides: Richard K. Meade, Jr.

Maj. Richard K. Meade, Jr. 

   There are a handful of men who have the distinction of fighting on both sides during the war. One of those is Richard Kidder Meade, Jr.  Born in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1835, he was the son of Richard K. Meade, a U.S. Congressman and diplomat, appointed as US Minister to Brazil by President James Buchanan. Richard K. Meade, Jr., was a member of the West Point class of 1857, graduating third in his class. Among his classmates were E. Alexander Porter, Richard H. Anderson, Samuel W. Ferguson, and John S. Marmaduke. Assigned to the engineering corps in the US Army following graduation, he arrived in Charleston on December 10, 1860. Major Robert Anderson first sent him to Castle Pinckney, but Meade discovered that he did not have enough materials to finish the project assigned to him.[1]

   When Major Anderson chose to transfer his command to Fort Sumter, 2^nd Lt. Meade used one of the barges to help move the troops. Meade was back at Castle Pickney when James J. Pettigrew arrived on the following day. Meade had no soldiers, just himself and an ordnance sergeant, along with several workers. When Meade refused to open the gate, Pettigrew’s men procured ladders and scaled the walls. Pettigrew demanded Meade surrender on order of the governor of South Carolina, which Meade stated he could not do. The US flag was hauled down and a red flag with a white star was run up. Meade refused to watch the flag go up and retired to his room to write his report. Meade also refused a parole, believing that to do so acknowledged South Carolina as a foreign government. Meade then headed for Fort Sumter.[2]

   Major Anderson sought Meade’s opinion when the Star of the West was fired upon, and when Governor Pickens sent two men to demand the Fort’s surrender. At the later, it was Meade who suggested that the matter be referred to their superiors in Washington, telling Anderson that if they fired on the South Carolinians firing on the ship, “It will bring civil war on us.”[3] Meade was placed in charge of making bags for powder for the cannons prior to the battle. When the battle began on April 12, Meade found himself in command of a gun crew. He was also still in charge of making powder bags, which were soon running short.[4] 

The capture of Castle Pinckney

   At one point, prior to the battle, Meade received a note that one member of his family, his mother, or maybe a sister, was ill. Meade received a furlough to visit the sick relative. Abner Doubleday later wrote that Meade’s absence to Virginia, was a “strategic move to force poor Meade into the ranks of the Confederacy. . . He had previously been overwhelmed with letters on the subject. He was already much troubled in mind; and some months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter the pressure of family ties induced him (very reluctantly as I heard) to join the Disunionists.”[5] However, Doubleday would later praise Meade, writing that while he had never been under fire, Meade “proved [himself] to be [a true] son of [his] Alma Mater at West Point.”[6]

   Meade accompanied Anderson and the others to New York following the surrender of Fort Sumter. When Virginia left the Union, Meade resigned his commission on May 1, 1861. He soon pitched his fate with the Confederate forces and was appointed major of artillery in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Meade was assigned as engineering officer to Magruder, then worked on the defenses in the Cape Fear area, with General Branch at New Bern, and served as engineer officer on the staff of James Longstreet about the time of the Seven Days campaign. Major Meade died of disease, probably typhoid, on July 31, 1862, and is buried at Blandford Church Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia.[7]

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[1] Detzer, Allegiance, 63.

[2] Detzer, Allegiance, 114, 134, 135.

[3] Swanberg, First Blood, 148.

[4] Detzer, Allegiance, 167; Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 48.

[5] Doubleday quoted in Hendrickson, Sumter, 138.

[6] Swanberg, First Blood, 305.

[7] Krick, Staff Officer in Gray, 218.

Jefferson Davis and Proclamations of Thanksgiving

Jefferson Davis 

    During the war years, it was fairly common for presidents, or army commanders, or a congress to call for days of thanksgiving after a military victory. Braxton Bragg called for such a day on September 18, 1862, following the surrender of 4,000 Federal soldiers at Munfordville, Kentucky, the previous day.[1] Robert E. Lee, following Braxton Bragg’s victory at Chickamauga, called on his men to render “to the Great Giver of Victory… our praise and thanksgiving for this signal manifestation of His favor…”[2] Nathan Bedford Forrest, writing from Tupelo, Mississippi, declared “Chaplains in the ministration of the gospel are requested to remember our personal preservation with thanksgiving and especially to beseech the Throne of Grace for aid in this our country’s hour of need,” on May 14, 1864.[3] There were calls for the governor of South Carolina to have a public day of Thanksgiving following the battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861.[4] This was followed by a call from the Confederate Congress for a day of Thanksgiving on the Sunday following the battle of First Manassas.[5] There are undoubtedly others. 

   Jefferson Davis would issue at least ten such calls for prayer, fasting, and/or thanksgiving during the war.[6] June 13, 1861 was one of the first, a call for a day of prayer and thanksgiving.[7] On February 20, 1862,  a proclamation on the “termination of the Provisional Government offers a fitting occasion to present ourselves in humiliation, prayer and thanksgiving before that God who has safely conducted us through the first year of our national existence.”[8]

 

   On September 18 came another proclamation, this time thanking “Almighty God for the great mercies vouchsafed to our people, and more especially for the late triumphs of our arms at Richmond and Manassas.[9] The text is copied below:

 

THANKSGIVING DAY 1862 for victory in battle BY JEFFERSON DAVIS

To the People of the Confederate States:

Once more upon the plains of Manassas have our armies been blessed by the Lord of Hosts with a triumph over our enemies. It is my privilege to invite you once more to His footstool, not now in the garb of fasting and sorrow, but with joy and gladness, to render thanks for the great mercies received at His hand. A few months since, and our enemies poured forth their invading legions upon our soil. They laid waste our fields, polluted our altars and violated the sanctity of our homes. Around our capital they gathered their forces, and with boastful threats, claimed it as already their prize. The brave troops which rallied to its defense have extinguished these vain hopes, and, under the guidance of the same almighty hand, have scattered our enemies and driven them back in dismay. Uniting these defeated forces and the various armies which had been ravaging our coasts with the army of invasion in Northern Virginia, our enemies have renewed their attempt to subjugate us at the very place where their first effort was defeated, and the vengeance of retributive justice has overtaken the entire host in a second and complete overthrow. To this signal success accorded to our arms in the East has been graciously added another equally brilliant in the West. On the very day on which our forces were led to victory on the Plains of Manassas, in Virginia, the same Almighty arm assisted us to overcome our enemies at Richmond, in Kentucky. Thus, at one and the same time, have two great hostile armies been stricken down, and the wicked designs of their armies been set at naught. 

   In such circumstances, it is meet and right that, as a people, we should bow down in adoring thankfulness to that gracious God who has been our bulwark and defense, and to offer unto him the tribute of thanksgiving and praise. In his hand is the issue of all events, and to him should we, in an especial manner, ascribe the honor of this great deliverance.

   Now, therefore, I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, do issue this, my proclamation, setting apart Thursday, the 18th day of September inst., as a day of prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the great mercies vouchsafed to our people, and more especially for the triumph of our arms at Richmond and Manassas; and I do hereby invite the people of the Confederate States to meet on that day at their respective places of public worship, and to unite in rendering thanks and praise to God for these great mercies, and to implore Him to conduct our country safely through the perils which surround us, to the final attainment of the blessings of peace and security.

   Given under my hand and the seal of the Confederate States, at Richmond, this fourth day of September, A.D.1862.[10]

 

   Davis would submit other days for official days of thanksgiving. One came in January 1863, following the victory at Fredericksburg the previous December.[11]  Another came in March 1863. “In obedience to His precepts, we have from time to time been gathered together with prayer and thanksgiving, and he has been graciously pleased to hear our supplications, and to grant abundant exhibitions of His favor to our armies and our people,” Davis wrote.[12]   

   Even though there were Confederate victories in 1864, such as Olustee, Kenesaw Mountain, Brice’s Crossroads, and Monocacy, there were fewer calls for days of thanksgiving. There were calls for days of prayer, humiliation, and fasting. One of these latter decrees came from the Confederate Congress in March.[13] Another came in February 1865.[14] It would be one of the last.

 

 

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[1] Official Records, Vol.16, pt. 2, 842.

[2] Official Records, Vol. 29, pt. 2, 746.

[3] Official Records, Vol. 39, pt. 2, 597.

[4] The Charleston Daily Courier, April 29, 1861.

[5] The Semi-Weekly Journal, (Raleigh), July 24, 1861.

[6] Allen, Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart, 312.

[7] Newbern Weekly Progress, June 11, 1861.

[8] Southern Confederacy (Atlanta) February 21, 1862.

[9] Southern Confederacy, September 6, 1862.

[10] McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, 154.

[11] The Tarborough Southerner (North Carolina), January 17, 1863.

[12] The Abington Virginian, March 6, 1863.

[13] The Daily Dispatch, March 24, 1864.

[14] Richmond Dispatch, January 12, 1865.

Site Visit Saturday: Fort Sumter

 

  For some people, Fort Sumter is the start of the war, the place where the first shots were fired. It is convenient to have a “beginning” place. But this simplified view neglects the firing on of the Star of the West in Charleston harbor on January 9, 1861; it neglects what is going on in Pensacola, Florida; it neglects the war that is already being waged in Kansas and Nebraska. Regardless of where you see the war starting, shots were fired on April 9, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina.

   Military installations go back decades prior to the 1860s. A palmetto and log fort was constructed on Sullivan’s Island by Patriot forces in 1776. The story of Fort Sumter starts right after the War of 1812. The United States, recognizing the need for better costal defenses, began work on a series of forts to protect important harbors. Work began on Fort Sumter in 1829 by building an island for a fort to sit upon.

   Fort Sumter was mostly empty of Federal troops in December 1860 when South Carolina seceded from the Union. Under the cover of darkness, the garrison pulled out from nearby Fort Moultrie and moved into Fort Sumter. In April 1861, Confederate forces learned that supply ships were on their way to the fort. A demand of surrender was refused on April 11, and Confederate forces opened fire on April 12. The fort surrendered the following day.

   There were several naval attacks against the Fort, including one on April 7, 1863, which resulted in the loss of the USS Keokuk. A second attempt, an amphibious operation to capture the fort, was launched in September 1863, but it also failed. When the Federals captured Morris Island in the summer of 1863, they were able to erect batteries that laid siege to the fort. For 587 days, artillery projectiles rained down on the fort, reducing the three story, five-sided, brick fortification to rubble. But Southerners took the rubble and created an earthwork fort. The Federal forces around Charleston Harbor were never able to capture Fort Sumter. The fort would remain in Confederate hands until February 1865, when the city of Charleston was abandoned. 

   Following the war, the U.S. Army rebuilt the fort. It served as an unmanned lighthouse station from 1876 to 1897, and in 1898, a new concrete gun emplacement was constructed inside. The new installation was named Battery Huger. It never saw action, and the fort was finally deactivated in 1947. In 1948, it became Fort Sumter National Monument, a part of the National Park Service.

   Several of the cannon found in the lower tier casements were found buried in the casements when Battery Huger was constructed.

   I list visited Fort Sumter in August 1995 (it is past time for a visit!).

A Tar Heel's view on Fort Sumter, pt. 2

A fleet of steamers arrived off the bar early in the day and came to anchor. The number was afterwards increased, for on Sunday, when we went down the harbor, we saw seven.


We were told by gentlemen from Morris Island that Anderson had signal lights burning constantly, and that his flag was at half-mast a part of the time. The vessels did not seem to take any notice of him.

The conduct of this fleet is enough to bury the stars and stripes forever in infamy. They had witnessed the fight all day, riding quietly at anchor in sight of the wharves and not more than three miles from Fort Sumter. When night came every one confidently expected the attempt would be made to come it, or land troops, and if they had their own time to choose out to five years, they could not have been favored with so many advantages. There was a splendid tide, the wind was in their favor, it was as dark as pitch, rainy and misty and there were no lights burning on the old hulks in the harbor as there had been the night before. Their attempt was regarded as so certain that preparations were redoubled at every point. Every one looked to see a general engagement—Thus the night wore away.

Early Saturday morning the fire was resumed, and in a very short while the cry went through the city, “Fort Sumter is on fire,” and so it was. A dense volume of smoke rose from the fort, and lurid flames leaped up visible to the naked eye.—Anderson still kept up his fire on the Floating Battery and Fort Moultrie, but it evidently became slower and weaker. The boys on Morris Island gave him three cheers for every gun he fired. And now there comes a tremendous explosion in the fort, resembling the blowing up of a house, and throwing smoke and flame high in the air. Some said the magazine had exploded; others that he was blowing up the barracks to stop the flame; but the truth was that a shell or hot shot had struck some hand-grenades and loose ammunition, causing the explosion. Anderson’s fire ceased altogether, as the devouring element enveloped the fort; but the shell from his enemies burst around him with increased rapidity and fury as he endeavored to extinguish the flames. At last, a yell from the whole line of spectators along the wharves and battery announced the fall of the flag which had been defiantly floating throughout the engagement, but which had been shot away. It was so long before the flag was raised again that the opinion became general that his men were exhausted or smothered with smoke, or killed, and that he could not raise the flag again, and accordingly, Col. Wigfall started in a small boat from Morris Island, bearing a white flag for Fort Sumter. Before he reached the fort, however, Maj. Anderson had showed the stars and stripes again, together with a white flag; but the firing continued at the sight of the former, and Col. Wigfall entered the fort through a storm of shell and shot, and asked for Major Anderson. – When he made his appearance, Col. Wigfall said that seeing his distress, his utter inability to hold out, and the his flag was not raised, he, as aid to Gen. Beauregard, claimed a surrender. Major Anderson wish to know upon what terms he was expected to surrender, to which Col. Wigfall gracefully replied, that Gen. Beauregard was a gentleman and a soldier, and know how to treat as brave an enemy as Major Anderson; whereupon an unconditional surrender was made to Gen. Beauregard in behalf of the Confederate State. The stars and stripes were then hauled downed and the batteries on Sullivan’s Island ceased their fire.

At the first appearance of the white flag, the enthusiasm and excitement became very great all over the city and among the troops, and when the Palmetto and Confederate flags were raised on the parapet, the ordnance from all points of the harbor pealed forth their joyful thunder. The water was alive with craft of all sorts. The details of surrender were made. Major Anderson was allowed to carry out his property and side arms and to salute his flag. The Isabel went down from the city, at his own request, to take him to New York.

And we would be glad to close this brief narrative here—but the worst and the best thing connected with the battle of Fort Sumter, happened subsequently. The hand of Providence seemed to be in this flight. History records no where the fact that skilful artillerist on both sides have fired for 33 hours without killing, or seriously wounding a man. Major. Anderson’s men were so small in number that, notwithstanding the fort is a scene of desolation inside, they could all be safely stowed away in the casemates and thus escape the iron hail. The sand batteries and iron batteries protected the South Carolinians wonderfully. The only loss of life was experiences occurred when Major Anderson’s men were saluting his flag immediately previous to leaving the fort. In firing one of the guns, some shells of loose ammunition lying on the parapets caught and exploded, killing one man instantly, and mortally wounding three or four others, two of whom have since died. Gen. Beauregard ordered that the one that was killed should be buried with military honors, which was done.


From the Wilmington Herald
Reprinted The Daily Register, April 20, 1861.

A Tar Heel’s views of Fort Sumter

What We Saw in Charleston


We left Wilmington on Thursday night last to witness, and, if allowed to participate in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Our journey was full of excitement which one might expect to realize when on his way to the field of battle for the first time. On Friday morning, when about twenty-five miles from Charleston, we heard the heavy ordnance of Sumter and the different batteries on the islands, and as the jarring thunder steadily and a regular intervals broke upon the early morning air. The excitement on the cars increased to fever heat and the passengers could scarcely restrain their impatience at one or two very brief stoppages of the train to take up several South Carolinians who were hurrying to the scene of action. As the train approached the city, the dull, heavy explosions shook the air in rapid succession like thunder-claps, and at last the clouds of smoke from the different batteries became visible, and the smell of burnt powder was wafted pleasantly on the breeze. We found the streets comparatively quiet--the citizens and strangers of both sexes having crowded down to the Battery—and, eating a hurried break fast, we ascended to the roof of the Mills House, with a friend, to take a view. And such a view!

There lay the waters of the beautiful harbor, sparkling and heaving gently to the kiss of the morning breeze. Directly before us arose out of the deep the beleaguered fortress, all its angles softened by the distance—the once glorious ensign of a once glorious republic floating proudly over its walls, and the whole scene looking as peaceful and beautiful as God intended it should be. But see! from a point on the right a white puff of smoke is sent, and, ere the report reaches us, a red flame burst over the flag-staff of Fort Sumter and the dreadful bomb scatters its fragments over the doomed fort and comes to the ear with a report almost equal to that of the mortar from which it proceeded. Another puff from the opposite wise where the floating battery and Fort Moultrie are located, an answer from Maj. Anderson, a round shot hurtles through the air from Cumings Point; and so it goes. We hurry down, passing the bulletin boards of the Mercury and Courier offices, and learning there that, as yet, “nobody is hurt.” Arrived at the Battery… we find several thousand ladies and gentlemen, citizens and strangers gazing at the conflict and all impressed with the character of the drama which was being enacted. Soldiers on horback and on foot, messengers and aids hurry to and fro. There was no weeping—no apparent distress—but upon the faces of all,--men, women and children, Determination was stamped in unmistakeable characters. We took our stand and watched every shot from every battery on each of the islands and from Fort Sumter. “There goes Stevens’ Battery,” ‘There goes Anderson,” “Look at that shell,” “now for the Floating Battery,” “Ripley keeps up the fire from Fort Moultrie gloriously,” “I’d give $100 to be there,” and a thousand other similar expressions constantly greeted the ear, while every time a should would explode over Sumter, leaving its little cloud of white smoke, a cheer would go up from the large concourse of spectators. Major Anderson generally alternated his shots with the different batteries (five or six in number) that were playing on him; but sometimes he would open fire from both sides at once.—He seemed about 9 o’clock on Friday to be paying his particular respects to Fort Moultrie, and a rumor reached the city that 30 or 40 men had been killed there, and that the battery was terribly exposed; but a short time proved these and various other rumors to be false. Moultrie kept pegging away slowly and steadily, as did the others. Fort Sumer replied briskly. Dispatches now came that the iron battery (Stevens) on Cummings’ Point, was rapidly making a breach in the Southwest wall of Sumter, and we think Major Anderson did not fire at Cummings’ Point after 2 o’clock on Friday. Cheering news arrived from all quarters, of the harmlessness of Anderson’s shots and the good spirits of the “boys.” The firing was kept up under dark, which there seemed to be only one gun about every ten or fifteen minutes, as it intended to keep Major Anderson awake.

To be continued….