This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[83] Colonel Wigfall, of Texas, volunteered to accompany me. While bringing my boat from its moorings in a creek, Wigfall, who was very much excited, jumped into a small skiff. The flag of the fort, which had been shot away, reappeared, and Wigfall was ordered to return, but he was out of hearing. I was ordered to return, and obeyed. Colonel Wigfall climbed through an embrasure, and, assuming authority from General Beauregard, called upon Major Anderson to surrender. Major Anderson did not realize the unauthorized nature of Wigfall's mission until the arrival of Captain Stephen D. Lee, William Porcher Miles, and Roger A. Pryor with an offer direct from General Beauregard, similar to the one General Simons was authorized to make. Major Anderson was about to renew the action, when Major David R. Jones arrived with the offer of terms for the surrender of the fort, which were virtually almost anything that Anderson might ask, in order that we might get possession before the fleet could reinforce and provision the garrison. I have always been of the opinion that Major Anderson should not have surrendered when he did. The fire only consumed the officers' and men's quarters; the two magazines were uninjured, only one man had been wounded, the walls were secure, and he still had provisions which would have sustained his small command until the fleet could both have provisioned and reinforced him. I was present with Captain Hartstene during the evacuation, and was astonished to see barrels of pork1 being rolled out and shipped on board the Isabel, the steamer furnished by General Beauregard to transport Anderson's men to the fleet. My duty often required that I should pass Fort Sumter and our guard-boats at night to visit Hartstene, who commanded the poor boats we used. I was rarely seen and had such a contempt for our guards that on one occasion, having a strong tide in my favor, we did not halt when shots were fired at us. In fact, we were seldom seen until close to the guards of the boat we sought. Captain Hartstene was well aware how easy it was to pass to Fort Sumter and expressed to me his uneasiness on this point; in fact, one bold officer in command of a navy barge, armed with a boat howitzer, could have easily cleared the way for a hundred barges with men and supplies to pass to the fort. The night but one previous to the surrender was very dark. I was ordered to Hartstene between the fort and the fleet in the main ship-channel, and my boat touched his guards before it was seen. Later in the war, when Beauregard defended the fort, one of the bravest officers in his command pronounced the work untenable. Beauregard then informed me that if necessary he would go there and hold the fort with his staff; that on no condition would he consent to give it up to General Gillmore. It was after this that General (then Major) Stephen Elliott made his gallant defense of the ruins; when, with the exception of some guns buried under the ruins of the casemate facing Fort Moultrie, but one small gun remained mounted, and that was pointed toward the city, being used merely to fire the salutes.
1 Captain J. G. Foster in his report says that the supply of bread in Sumter failed April 10th, and that the last of the damaged rice was served at breakfast on the 13th. “The want of provisions,” he adds, “would soon have caused the surrender of the fort, but with plenty of cartridges [referring to the lack of material for cartridge-bags] the men would have cheerfully fought five or six days, and, if necessary, much longer, on pork alone, of which we had a sufficient supply.”--editors.
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.