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unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days.”
1 The “sober second thought” of the people was dreaded.
The conspirators knew that there was solemn truth in the assertion, that “the big heart of the people is still in the Union.
It is now subjugated temporarily to the will of the politicians.
Less than a hundred thousand politicians are endeavoring to destroy the liberties and usurp the rights of more than thirty millions of people.”
2
At two o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday, the 11th of April, Beauregard sent Colonel James Chesnut, Jr., Colonel Chisholm, and Captain Stephen D. Lee, of his staff, with a letter to Major Anderson, in which he conveyed a demand for the evacuation of Fort Sumter.3 This reached the fort at four o'clock. Major Anderson, who was in expectation of such demand, at once replied, that his sense of honor and obligations to his Government would not allow him to comply.
At the same time he informed Beauregard's aids, orally, that the condition of his supplies was such that he would be compelled, by menaces of starvation, to leave the fort in a few days.
They returned to Beauregard under a red flag, thereby indicating to the commanders of the forts and batteries that no peaceful arrangement had yet been made.
That officer instantly communicated Anderson's remark to Walker, the “Confederate Secretary of War,” at Montgomery, giving as his words:--“I will await the first shot, and if you do not batter us to pieces, we will be starved out in a few days.”
Walker telegraphed back, that if Major Anderson would state the time when he would evacuate, and agree that, meanwhile, he would not use his guns against them, unless theirs should be employed against Fort Sumter, Beauregard was authorized thus to avoid
1 Speech of Jeremiah Clemens, formerly United States Senator from Alabama, at Huntsville, in that State, on the 18th of March, 1864.
2 Raleigh (North Carolina) Banner.
3 The original of Beauregard's letter is before me while I write. It is as follows:--
It is a noteworthy fact, that the paper on which was written this demand from the conspirators for a recognition of their right and power to destroy the Union, bore, in its water-mark, the emblem of Union, namely, the Union shield, with its full complement of stars on and around it, and in the segment of a circle over it the words, E Pluribus Unum. In a corner, surrounded in an ellipse formed by the words Evans and Cogswell, Charleston, was a picture of the National Capitol at Washington.
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