LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664626158

Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       ILLUSTRATIONS

       CHAPTER I

       CHAPTER II

       CHAPTER III

       CHAPTER IV

       CHAPTER V

       CHAPTER VI

       CHAPTER VII

       CHAPTER VIII

       CHAPTER IX

       CHAPTER X

       CHAPTER XI

       CHAPTER XII

       BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

       INDEX

PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      Sixty years ago today the guns that thundered round Fort Sumter began the third and greatest modern civil war fought by English-speaking people. This war was quite as full of politics as were the other two—the War of the American Revolution and that of Puritan and Cavalier. But, though the present Chronicle never ignores the vital correlations between statesmen and commanders, it is a book of warriors, through and through.

      I gratefully acknowledge the indispensable assistance of Colonel G. J. Fiebeger, a West Point expert, and of Dr. Allen Johnson, chief editor of the series and Professor of American History at Yale.

      WILLIAM WOOD,

      Late Colonel commanding 8th Royal Rifles, and Officer-in-charge, Canadian Special Mission Overseas.

      QUEBEC,

       April 18, 1921.

ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

      GENERAL U. S. GRANT Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

      GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington

      GENERAL T. J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON Photograph. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

      NORTH AND SOUTH IN 1861 Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

      ADMIRAL D. G. FARRAGUT Photograph by Brady.

      CIVIL WAR: CAMPAIGNS OF 1862 Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

      CIVIL WAR: VIRGINIA CAMPAIGNS, 1862 Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

       CIVIL WAR: CAMPAIGNS OF 1863 Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

      GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.

      CIVIL WAR: CAMPAIGNS OF 1864 Map by W. L. G. Joerg, American Geographical Society.

       CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      THE CLASH: 1861

      States which claimed a sovereign right to secede from the Union naturally claimed the corresponding right to resume possession of all the land they had ceded to that Union's Government for the use of its naval and military posts. So South Carolina, after leading the way to secession on December 20, 1860, at once began to work for the retrocession of the forts defending her famous cotton port of Charleston. These defenses, being of vital consequence to both sides, were soon to attract the strained attention of the whole country.

      There were three minor forts: Castle Pinckney, dozing away, in charge of a solitary sergeant, on an island less than a mile from the city; Fort Moultrie, feebly garrisoned and completely at the mercy of attackers on its landward side; and Fort Johnson over on James Island. Lastly, there was the world-renowned Fort Sumter, which then stood, unfinished and ungarrisoned, on a little islet beside the main ship channel, at the entrance to the harbor, and facing Fort Moultrie just a mile away. The proper war garrison of all the forts should have been over a thousand men. The actual garrison—including officers, band, and the Castle Pinckney sergeant—was less than a hundred. It was, however, loyal to the Union; and its commandant, Major Robert Anderson, though born in the slave-owning State of Kentucky, was determined to fight.

      The situation, here as elsewhere, was complicated by Floyd, President Buchanan's Secretary of War, soon to be forced out of office on a charge of misapplying public funds. Floyd, as an ardent Southerner, was using the last lax days of the Buchanan Government to get the army posts ready for capitulation whenever secession should have become an accomplished fact. He urged on construction, repairs, and armament at Charleston, while refusing to strengthen the garrison, in order, as he said, not to provoke Carolina. Moreover, in November he had replaced old Colonel Gardner, a Northern veteran of "1812," by Anderson the Southerner, in whom he hoped to find a good capitulator. But this time Floyd was wrong.

      The day after Christmas Anderson's little garrison at Fort Moultrie slipped over to Fort Sumter under cover of the dark, quietly removed Floyd's workmen, who were mostly Baltimore Secessionists, and began to prepare for defense. Next morning Charleston was furious and began to prepare for attack. The South Carolina authorities at once took formal possession of Pinckney and Moultrie;

Скачать книгу