The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-12
SEATTLE. TUESD4F. APRIL 1s.
THE STORY OF SUMTER.


Today is the anniversary of the firing
on Fort Sumter. The formal demand for
the surrender of the fort was made by the
Confederate General Beauregard on the
18th of April, 1861; it was renewed early
on the morning of the 18th. and at a. m.
the Confederate batteries opened fire.
Anderson's garrison, less than 100 men in
all, endured the fire during the 18th and
18th and surrendered on the 14th. Ander-
son and his fellow Officers are all dead save
General Abner Doubleday, of the retired
list of the regular army, and General Sam
uel W. Crawford, who was then assistant
surgeon in the regular army and after
wards rose to be major general of volun-
teers in the Fifth corps of the Army of
the Potomac. General Beauregard, who
is about 70 years old, is living quietly at
New Orleans. All the other leading actors
in the drama of Fort Sumter on both sides
are dead.
Sumter's surrender was no fault of
Lincoln's; the fort was doomed before
Lincoln was in power. through the miser-
able weakness of President Buchanan.
Had Buchanan permitted Anderson to nse
his guns when the confederacy began the
erection of batteries on Sullivan's, Morris
and James islands, the batteries which
drove off the Star of the West in January,
1861. would not have been erected, Sumter
would have been saved, and the port of
Charleston held even as Fort Pickens was
relieved by Porter. But by positive orders
Anderson was hidden to stand still
beside his guns and see a circle
of powerful batteries drawn around the
tort. By March, Anderson was beyond
rescue, and General Scott advised Lincoln
to evacuate the fort. March 15, 1861, Lincoln
asked his cabinet whether it was wise to
attempt to provision Fort Sumter. Chase
and Blair, agreeing with Lincoln's in
clinations, answered in the affirmative,
butSeward, Cameron, Welles, Smith and
Bates advised against the measure. Even
Chase, while answering in the affirmative,
said that if he thought that the attempt to
provision Fort Sumter would open civil
war he would not advise it.
The situation of Lincoln was at this
time one of severe trial. The head of the
army, General Scott, was full of timid,
temporizing counsels, and despaired of re-
storing the Union by force of arms. Scott,
trained as soldier, had become so spirit
less that he urged that Sumter and Pick
ems be surrendered as a sop to the South,
and, so far rs the attempted relief of
Sumter was concerned, every man of Lin
coins cabinet sided with Scott save Blair,
who had been educated at West Point and
served some years in the army. Blair and
Captain Fox, of the navy, Blair's brother
in-law, were the only persons among Lin
coins advisers who squarely sided with
Lincoln's own inclinations and urged the
impolicy of evacuating Sumter and the
wisdom of bold effort for its relief.
Blair, Fox and Lincoln were right. The
relief expedition that finally did reach
Charleston bar at the last moment could
have reached Fort Sumter during the
night with provisions and re-enforcements
had there been a sailor of Farragut's tenn
per to lead it. 1t was not nearly as dam
gerous duty as was successfully executed
by our wooden warships and transports in
the subsequent history of the war. When
early in April Lincoln attempted to send
Anderson a supply of bread and powder
the conspirators opened on the fort They
could have compelled its surrender as
early as the middle of February but thew
shrewdly bided their time. When they
had stolen ali the delay possible from the
government, when Lincoln's moderate
counsels and pathetic remonstrance
were still ringing in the ears Of
Virginia and secession was trembling in
the balance in that state, the daring lead
ers of the great conspiracy fred their shot,
and when Sumter replied there was an end
OF compromise, an end of negotiations;
sectional pride and feeling carried the day
with thousands of men who had no SYM
pathy with secession; no love for its
leaders. Lee wrote his sister that secession
was causelcss and foolish act; Bragg
wrote Sherman after the secession of
South Carolina in December, 1860, that
Louisiana was TO be dragged out of the
Union by political hacks and bsr-room
DULLES.
Before Sumter the people of the South
never wanted to secede To break down
the resistance of such men as Bragg, Lee
Joe Johnston, and sweep them off their
feet under a wave of popular sectional
fury and madness, the real, original, guilty
conspirators fired on Sumter, and for their
fell purpose il was the most effective thing
they could have done. The consequences
of that shot were that the best men. the
best blood of the South, that really shrunk
from secession and shuddered at
civil war, were drawn into its whirlpool
and while not responsible for secession
or the war, came out of it all poor, having
lost everything in fight they never
helped force. These men really loved the
has regretted TO leave it, but they went
with their comrades, stood mp with their
state where their family estates existed,
where their dead were buried; they
couldn't stand the senseless, savage racket
of the "seeesh" hawlers. and they lost,
many Of them, their lives. their planta.
tons, their property in negroes.
II Is impossible TO refuse our admiration
Tor the courage and dash with which the
real executives of the secession conspiracy
contaminated their purpose; Yancey,