150 Years Ago: Fox Gets His Orders

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On Thursday, April 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln called Captain Gustavus Fox to the White House.  The president had finally made up his mind to relieve Fort Sumter and Fox would be the man to do it around April 11.

Lincoln told Fox that a messenger would be sent to South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens giving him due notice of the attempt.  No troops would be landed if the delivery of the provisions was unopposed.

Lincoln also gave Fox formal orders from Secretary of War Simon Cameron.  Fox was to load supplies and troops into a ship at New York, then proceed to Charleston harbor.  If armed forces opposed him, he was to report to the senior naval officer present who would have orders from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to use his entire force to land troops and supplies.  A letter was being sent to Major Anderson at the fort that day telling him what was being attempted and ordering him to hold out if he could.

Fox hurried back to New York, where he chartered the Baltic and rounded up the troops and supplies needed.  He was ready to set sail by April 9.

From The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton:

"The expedition he was leading had been substantially augmented since he first suggested it. Originally the big idea had been to slip a boatload of provisions into the harbor by a stealthy dash at night, relying on speed and deception to get the supplies to Fort Sumter before the Confederates knew what was up; now all question of surprise was given up, Governor Pickens was being officially notified in advance that the thing was going to be tried, and four warships were going along with orders to open fire if there was any trouble. Clearly enough the entire concept of the operation had changed. A month earlier the underlying idea had been to uphold Major Anderson and his garrison; now it was nothing less than to uphold the breadth and depth of Federal authority over an unbroken Union. The first might have been done by a quick dash with nobody looking; the second would mean nothing unless seen by all the world, and if General Beauregard's cannon might help call the world's attention to it, that would be up to General Beauregard. The first had been nothing more than a play for time. This was a frank avowal that time had run out.

"Table stakes, in other words. Sending the outridder down to Governor Pickens, Lincoln was shooting the works. He was not forcing a war, but he was serving notice that he would rather fight than back down; more, he was setting the stage in such a way that Jefferson Davis, if he in his turn preferred to fight rather than to back down, would have to shoot first. Lincoln had been plainly warned by Lamon and Hurlbut that a ship taking provisions to Fort Sumter would be fired on. Now he was sending the ship, with advance notice to the men who had the guns. He was sending warships and soldiers as well, but they would remain in the background; if there was going to be a war it would begin over a boatload of salt pork and crackers -- over that, and the infinite overtones which by now were involved. Not for nothing did Captain Fox remark afterward that it seemed very important to Lincoln that South Carolina 'should stand before the civilized world as having fired upon bread.'"

Also on this date, in Virginia, the state convention rejected a motion to hold a referendum on secession 89 to 45. Virginia would stay in the Union for the time being. At about the same time, Lincoln met with John Baldwin, a Unionist member of the Virginia state convention. Apparently Lincoln was trying to work out some kind of deal that would keep Virginia in the Union, that he would trade a fort (Sumter) for a state. Baldwin could not make a deal to bind the convention and nothing ever became of the negotiation.

150 Years Ago: Fox at Charleston

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President Abraham Lincoln really wanted to hang on to Fort Sumter if he could, especially since he had promised to do so in his inaugural address.  On one hand, his cabinet was almost unanimously for giving up the fort; on the other, public opinion was strongly against giving up the fort without a fight and growing stronger and louder by the day.  Lincoln needed more information and sent three men to Charleston to report back on the situation there.

The first of these men was Captain Gustavus Fox.  He met with Lincoln on this date, Tuesday, March 19, 1861, then immediately left for Charleston.  He arrived two days later and met with Governor Francis Pickens to explain his mission.  Pickens allowed him to travel to the fort to meet with Major Robert Anderson, the commander of the garrison there.

Anderson thought it was too late, that to relieve him now would be a massive undertaking.  He also made it clear that he was running low on supplies and could not stay in the fort past April 15.  Fox later insisted that he did not tell Anderson about his plan to use small boats to relieve the fort at night, but apparently enough hints were dropped that Anderson figured it out on his own.

150 Years Ago: A Plan for Fort Sumter

On Wednesday, March 13, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln met with Gustavus Fox, a former naval officer, about a plan to reinforce Fort Sumter.

Fox's plan did not involve the large fleet of warships and thousands of troops that General Winfield Scott envisioned blasting their way into the harbor.  It relied more on stealth.  The troops and supplies would travel to Charleston on transports with an escort of warships.  The transports would wait outside the bar at the entrance to the harbor, then, under cover of a dark night, the troops and supplies would be transferred to small ships -- whale boats, barges, landing craft, etc.  Tugboats could tow them right up to the Fort Sumter wharf,  The warships outside the harbor could then drive off anyone that tried to interfere.  If all went well, the fort could be reinforced before the Charlestonians knew what was going on.

Fox's plan had originally been approved in February by the Buchanan administration, but had not been carried out.  Robert Anderson, the commander of the Fort Sumter garrison, had decided that reinforcements were not needed.  After the Star of the West fiasco, Anderson had telegraphed the War Department that any effort to put supplies in the fort "would do more harm than good."  Anderson's dispatches since then had not shown any change in his situation; apparently, supplies and reinforcements were not needed.  Suddenly, on March 4, the War Department received a telegram from Anderson saying that he would have to evacuate the fort if he wasn't resupplied soon.  That left the Lincoln administration scrambling to find a way to reinforce the fort or risk losing it.

Also on this date, Lincoln instructed Secretary of State William Seward not to meet with the Confederate commissioners who were in Washington to negotiate for recognition and surrender of the Federal property in the Southern states.  Lincoln's position was that the states that thought they had seceded were still in the Union, and he didn't want to do anything that might make it seem like his administration was negotiating with representatives of a foreign nation.