04 April 2011
April Program
On Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 7:30 PM the SDCWRT will hold its 296th meeting at Palisades Presbyterian Church, at 6301 Birchwood St., San Diego, CA 92120.
This month’s speaker will be one of our own members. Josh Weiselberg’s program will be “The Western Theater: Mill Springs and Shiloh.” Josh will introduce the Union and Confederate commanders that played a role in the Western conflict. He will discuss Shiloh and its significance in the strategy in the west, and its effect on later engagements out there, including Mill Springs as a focal point.
Josh will supply an overview of the future of the Western Theater of the War and how Crittenden, McCullough, Van Dorn, Grant, Curtis, as well as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis responded after these events. Sounds as if it is going to be a very interesting program so come one and all.
March 2011 Meeting
By Travis Fuqua with Photographs by Bob Batten
On March 16, 2011, the San Diego Civil War Round Table listened to Pedro Garcia’s “Men Really Do Go Mad, Part 2”. In November of 2010, in Part 1, Mr. Garcia noted the events which happened in Washington between the election of Abraham Lincoln and his inauguration in March of 1861, including President Buchanan’s difficulty, or lack of effort, in controlling the situation and his cabinet’s extreme corruption and division. In this presentation, Mr. Garcia moved the focus to Charleston, South Carolina, where the iconic Ft. Sumter is located and where the Civil War began.
In addition to the difficulties in the outgoing administration, President-elect Abraham Lincoln was no more helpful in containing the situation which was quickly getting out of hand in South Carolina. Lincoln was not alone, however, and as South Carolina began to work for secession, some northern newspaper editorials said that she should be let go.
Perhaps the angriest man in South Carolina was Robert Barnwell Rhett, Jr. The younger Rhett was the editor of the Charleston Mercury and had continuously conveyed his secessionist sentimetnts through his editorship. These sentiments were amongst the most radical and were seen as so extreme by some that the younger Rhett was prevented from becoming governor of South Carolina after a successful career in Congress. The governorship instead went to a milder secessionist, Francis Wilkinson Pickens. Rhett was not the only extreme secessionist. Virginian Edmund Ruffin, born in 1794 was rabidly anti-union. He was quite impatient with Virginia’s “slow” secession movement and went to South Carolina where according to legend he began the bombardment of Ft. Sumter. All of this anti-union sentiment of the “fire-eaters” illustrates the rabid nature of the planter class in the South as well as their undemocratic tendencies and haughty nature as they pushed the union towards its destruction.
Meanwhile, the defenses in Charleston, South Carolina had been designed to protect the harbor against invasion from the sea and never against the city itself. In addition, many of the forts were quite outdated or even half-abandoned. There was Fort Moultrie on Sullivan Island, which was the main Federal battery, but was old and decaying. Ft. Moultrie was held by sixty-one men. Further in Charleston Harbor was Fort Pinckney which served as the magazine for the Federal forts and was only staffed by one ordinance sergeant. Elsewhere in the Harbor was the Revolutionary War-era Fort Johnson which had no strategic value and was also manned by only one man. In the middle of the harbor on an artificial island was the soon-to-be-formidable Fort Sumter. Ft. Sumter was amongst the strongest fortifications on the Atlantic coast, but was not yet complete after thirty years of construction and was still only modestly armed.
Mr. Garcia Explaining Major Anderson's Flight from Ft. Moultrie
Ft. Moultrie was under the command of General John Lane Gardner, but during the pending secession crisis he proved to be tactless with the locals and was replaced by a Southerner—Major Robert Anderson on November 15, 1860. Anderson knew his assignment was going to be difficult, but this was compounded by the corrupt Secretary of War, John B. Floyd who made no effort to increase Federal manpower in the increasingly hostile city. Anderson sent six separate requests to Washington for re-enforcements and received no reply. On the night of December 26, 1860 while the hostile city was relaxed during Christmas festivities, Anderson moved his command to Ft. Sumter. South Carolina Confederates were so enraged that they occupied the other three Federal batteries in the harbor leaving Anderson alone at Ft. Sumter. President Buchanan sought Anderson’s return to Ft. Moultrie, but strong opposition in his Cabinet prevented him from pressing, and instead had him send an ill-fated supply mission.
General Winfield Scott was going to send the warship “Brooklyn” but instead sent the civilian ship “Star of the West” from Ft. Monroe. The “Star of the West’ arrived in Charleston Harbor on January 8, 1861, but was forced to withdraw when it faced Confederate fire. These were the first shots of the war. At Ft. Sumter, Anderson’s options were limited in that if he provided cover fire for the ship, he would have started a war and thus he decided to be the better person and let the Confederates make the situation worse. Some, including Abraham Lincoln and Abner Doubleday, an officer under Anderson, were not happy with his decision.
With the failure of the “Star of the West” mission, the situation in the South grew more heated. Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861 and soon after William Seward became the Secretary of State. It has been argued that Seward was the most able statesman in the new Cabinet. Seward, however, sought to appease the South to save the Union and in doing so sought to shape Lincoln’s opinion, which would later turn out to be one if his actual follies as Lincoln was not easily controlled. The South had been preparing for war since secession and by Lincoln’s inauguration their army outnumbered the diminished Federal Army. Many felt Lincoln was too much at ease about the pending crisis. Lincoln remained cool when told Anderson had only six weeks of supplies remaining.
With Anderson’s supplies dwindling, Lincoln was faced with a dilemma. He could go with the popular action of surrendering the fort, or resupply the fort and cause a war. Lincoln made a third choice to supply the fort, but warn Jefferson Davis and if Davis consented to Ft. Sumter’s resupplying, Lincoln would stand down, and if not, the ships would defend themselves and begin the Civil War. Thus the decision was left to Davis and true to Confederate haughtiness, he told General Beauregard to prepare a “ring of fire” to bombard Ft. Sumter. The bombardment of Ft. Sumter began on April 12, 1861. Since the Confederates had mortars and Anderson did not wish to endanger his men, he prevented them from using the heavier guns on the parapet, but this only weakened the defense of Ft. Sumter to the lesser guns of the casement. After he began to run low on ammunition and fearing a shot to the magazine, Anderson surrendered Ft. Sumter on April 14, 1861. With the bombardment of Ft. Sumter by Confederate forces, thus began the most tragic war in American history. Anderson returned to the North a hero, but died in 1871 with his health having been ruined by his experiences.