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April 20, 1861 – Captain Doubleday’s Statement

The bombardment of Fort Sumter (Currier & Ives)

Major Anderson landed at the Battery, and was received by an immense crowd. His carriage was surrounded by the people, who expressed in cheers and other demonstrations their congratulations. He was followed by an immense throng through Broadway to the Brevoort House, where he was joined by his wife.  

The following is a digest of Capt. Doubleday’s statement :

The demand to surrender Fort Sumter was made on the 11th, and refused, not only by Major Anderson, but the unanimous voice of his command. On Friday morning, at 3 o’clock the rebels sent word that a fire would be opened in one hour, and at 4 o’clock the fire opened upon us in every direction, including the hidden battery. The fire was opened with a volley of seventeen mortars, firing ten inch shells, and shot from thirty three guns, mostly Columbiads. We took breakfast, however, very leisurely. The command was divided into three watches, each under the direction of two officers. After breakfast they immediately went to the guns, and opened fire on Fort Moultrie, Cummings’ Point and Sullivan’s Island. The iron battery on Cummings’ Point was of immense strength, and most of our guns glanced off. Major Anderson refused lo allow the men to work the guns on the parapet, on account of such a terrific fire directed there.

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Surrender of Fort Sumter — Great Rejoicing among the People — Unparalleled Excitement

The interest of our citizens in the exciting events lately occurring in the neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, always intense, as manifested by the crowds that have thronged around the bulletin boards of the different newspapers airing the past week, culminated on Saturday evening on the reception of the news of the surrender of Fort Sumter, In one of the wildest, most enthusiastic and irrepressible expressions of heartfelt and exuberant joy on the part of the people generally, that we have ever known to be the case before in Richmond. Nothing else was talked of, or thought of, save the great triumph achieved by the heroic troops of the glorious Southern Confederacy in obliterating one of the Illinois ape’s standing menaces against the assertion of Southern rights and equality.— So far as the opinion of the people is concerned, it would have been much more to the old rail-splitter’s credit had he ordered Anderson to leave Fort Sumter, as an untenable and undesirable place, than to attempt, as he and his coadjutors did, to make the undoubtedly gallant Major the scapegoat of his insiduous and damnable views. We repeat, that had wise counsels prevailed, the old ape would have had all the credit between a graceful leave-taking and an ignominious expulsion at the cannon’s mouth. 

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April 13, 1861 – Bombardment of Fort Sumter

Map of Charleston harbor

Civil war has begun! General Beauregard, in accordance with instructions received on Wednesday, from the Secretary of War of the Southern confederacy, opened fire upon Fort Sumter yesterday morning, at twenty-seven minutes after four o’clock. Forts Johnson and Moultrie, the iron battery at Cummings’ Point, and the Stevens Floating Battery, kept up an active cannonade during the entire day, and probably during the past night. The damage done to Fort Sumter had been, up to the last accounts, considerable. Guns had been dismounted, and a part of the parapet swept away.

Major Anderson had replied vigorously to the fire which had been opened upon him, but our despatches represent the injury inflicted by him to have been but small. The utmost bravery had been exhibited on both sides, and a large portion of the Charleston population, including five thousand ladies, were assembled upon the Battery to witness the conflict.

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April 7, 1861 – The War Question

The recent “masterly inactivity” of our new administration has ceased to be a mystery. It is at length understood. Professions and appearances of peace, conciliation and forbearance in regard to the seceded States were all well enough in view of Mr. Secretary Chase’s call upon Wall street for eight millions in the way of a loan, and in view of certain elections in Connecticut and Rhode Island. But those elections being over, and Mr. Chase’s loan having been sufficiently successful to delude him with the idea that, come what may, he has only to ask in order to receive any amount of money from our Wall street financiers, we find that all these late professions and pretences of peace and conciliation were only disguises, which, having served their objects, are now thrown aside. The people of Connecticut and Rhode Island have been deceived, and the sharp and knowing money changers of Wall street have been egregiously humbugged. War, and not peace, it is now manifest, has been all along the fixed policy and purpose of Mr. Lincoln’s administration.

Our new President has some reputation as a joker, and the practical jokes, in the game of hide and peek, which he has been playing with Fort Sumter for several weeks, have certainly been very amusing. Astonished one day by authentic advices from Washington of a Cabinet decision for the immediate evacuation of said fort, and taken somewhat aback the next day by reliable information that there has been no Cabinet decision on the subject, we have been positively assured on the third day that if Major Anderson cannot be relieved he will be left himself to choose between starvation, evacuation or capitulation. Fourthly, all the Washington correspondents concur in the report that though Fort Sumter may be abandoned, Fort Pickens will be held by our government “at all hazards and to the last extremity.”

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April 6, 1861 – Charleston Affairs

The South Carolinians are evidently tiring of the vascillating policy of the Administration, and we expect to hear of some determined action on their part in a few days, if we are to judge from the following paragraphs, taken from the papers of Charleston of Thursday:

It is said now that the last mortar is in its place, and that the ammunition and supplies are all in our possession, so that every means for the speedy reduction of Fort Sumter may be said to be entirely accomplished. There is no possibility of supplies or reinforcements being thrown in from the sea, for there is not the power in the United Stales Navy to do it, and of course the reduction of Fort Sumter is only a matter of time.