Daniel Ammen, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.2, The Atlantic Coast
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[5] the North was long in attaining that intensity of purpose that is so potent when untrained bodies of troops meet in conflict. Fort Sumter was regarded in the public mind, North and South, as the citadel of the fortress, the incarnation of rebellion, and as such it was attacked and defended.

Failing in the fleet attack, with grim satisfaction, after a time the men of the North saw its walls crumble and fall from the fire of guns four thousand yards away, until from their point of view, it had no longer shape nor semblance of a fort, nor was a single piece of ordnance permitted to stand upon what had once been its walls; but the satisfaction of the North was not complete until, in the most formal manner, the flag that had been hauled down, four years to the day and hour from that event, again floated over the mass of ruins known as Fort Sumter.

In the confusion at the North, growing out of numerous resignations hastily sent in, abandonment of duty on the part of others, and in some cases of treachery, it is not to be wondered that the Norfolk Navy Yard fell into the hands of the Confederates, with its three thousand cannon, its fine dry dock, numerous well-appointed workshops, material, and small arms. It is not too much to say now, that it should have been held at any cost of life, long enough at least to have destroyed the cannon, workshops, and ships.

There is an extenuating fact that may be stated as a partial justification of officers who were recreant. For half a century perhaps, there had existed a kind of culture of fealty to a State, instead of to the Government which they served; it was paraded as a dogma, and was in a degree acknowledged by some officers from the South in the military service of the Government, more than half of whom, prior to the Civil War, either came from the slave States or had married within them. Able and educated men, acknowledging this ‘doctrine,’