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Marshaling the Federal army
Charles King, Brigadier-General, United State Volunteers
Union men wore anxious faces early in the spring of 1861.
For months the newspapers had been filled with accounts of the seizure of Government forts and arsenals all over the
South.
State after State had seceded, and the
New York Tribune, edited by
Horace Greeley, had bewildered the
North and encouraged the
South by declaring that if the latter desired to set up a governments of its own it had every moral right to do so. The little garrison of
Fort Moultrie, in
Charleston Harbor, threatened by a superior force and powerless against land attack, had spiked its guns on Christmas night, in 1860, and pulled away for
Sumter, perched on its islet of rocks a mile from shore, hoisted the Stars and Stripes, and there, in spite of pitiful numbers, with a Southern-born soldier at its head, practically defied all
South Carolina.
The
Star of the West had been loaded with soldiers and supplies at New York, and sent to
Sumter's relief.
Then
South Carolina, duly warned, had manned the guns of
Morris Island and driven her black to sea. Not content with that,
South Carolina, the envy of an applauding sisterhood of Southern States, had planted batteries on every point within range of
Sumter.
All the
North could see that its fate was sealed, and no one, when the 1st of April came, could say just how the
North would take it.
The second week settled the question.
With one accord, on April 12th, the
Southern guns opened on the lone fortress and its puny force.
The next day, with the flagstaff shot away and the interior of the
Fort all ablaze, the casemates thick with
