150 Years Ago: William Tillman

On Sunday, July 7, 1861, the Confederate privateer Jefferson Davis captured the schooner S. J. Waring about 150 miles off the coast of Sandy Hook, New Jersey.  The Confederates put a five-man prize crew on the schooner and headed her toward Charleston.

It would not end well for the privateers.  Aboard the S. J. Waring was an African-American serving as the ship's cook, William Tillman (also spelled Tilghman).  He was told that he, like the ship and the cargo, was Southern property and would be sold into bondage when the ship reached the South.

On the night of July 16, Tillman went to the captain's cabin with an axe and killed the captain and first mate in their sleep.  He then went up on deck and killed the second mate.  He tossed the bodies overboard, then forced the remaining members of the prize crew to surrender.  Tillman, two other crew members who had remained on board, a passenger, and the two surviving members of the prize crew sailed the ship to New York, arriving there on July 22.  Tillman was awarded $6000 in prize money.


Also on this date, the U.S.S. Resolute encountered and successfully swept two moored mines in the Potomac River.  Following the battle of Aquia Creek, the Confederates had placed the mines near where the creek joined the river.  This was almost certainly the first time the Confederates used mines, but they would sink some 40 ships with them during the war.

John Ellis, the governor of North Carolina, died at Red Sulphur Springs, Virginia (now West Virginia).  Ellis had been in ill health for some time and had traveled to Red Sulpher Springs to recuperate.  Henry Clark, the speaker of the state senate, had assumed Ellis's duties when he left the state and served out the remainder of his term. 

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• Pepe Productions' 'Jefferson Davis' reveals lost shipwreck (timesunion.com)

150 Years Ago -- North Carolina and Tennessee

On Wednesday, May 1, 1861, the four soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment killed in the Baltimore riot were buried with full military honors in Boston.

Also on this date, North Carolina began the process of leaving the Union.  The governor, John Ellis, called for a special session of the legislature soon after Fort Sumter.  They convened on this date and set an election for May 13 for a convention that was to convene on May 20 to consider a secession ordinance.

Tennessee was also taking steps to leave the Union.  On this date, the General Assembly authorized Governor Isham Harris to appoint commissioners to conclude a military league with the Confederacy.  The commissioners were quickly appointed and just as quickly drew up an agreement with Henry Hilliard, Jefferson Davis's envoy to Nashville.  The agreement was submitted to the legislature for approval on May 7.

150 Years Ago: Replies

On Tuesday, April 16, 1861, William Brownlow, the editor of the Knoxville Whig, came up with one of the more memorable quotes of the war, writing that he would "fight the Secessionist leaders till Hell froze over, and then fight them on the ice."

The replies to Lincoln's call for militia began coming in.  The news from Fort Sumter had triggered a wave of patriotism in the North.  The governors were quick to offer their support and soon had more recruits than they could use.

The border states were a different matter though.  Lincoln's call for troops was seen as "coercion" of their Southern brethren.  The governors replied negatively to Lincoln's call and began making plans to leave the Union themselves.

Virginia Governor John Letcher:

In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object -- an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795 -- will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited towards the South.

Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin:

I say, emphatically, Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states.

North Carolina Governor John Ellis:

Your dispatch is received, and if genuine which its extraordinary character leads one to doubt, I have to say in reply, that I regard the levy of troops made by the Administration for the purposes of subjugating the States of the South, as in violation of the Constitution, and as a gross usurpation of power. I can be no part to this wicked violation of the laws of the Country and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.

Tennessee Governor Isham Harris:

Tennessee will not furnish a single man for the purposes of coercion but 50,000 if necessary for the defence of our rights and those of our Southern brothers.

Arkansas Governor Henry Rector:

In answer to your requisition for troops from Arkansas to subjugate the Southern States, I have to say that none will be furnished. The demand is only adding insult to injury. The people of this commonwealth are freemen, not slaves, and will defend, to the last extremity, their honor, lives and property against Northern mendacity and usurpation.

Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson:

Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary in its object, inhuman and diabolical, and cannot be complied with. Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade.

January 10, 1861

On Thursday, January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.  A state convention voted for secession 62 to 7.

At Pensacola, the Federal troops under Lieutenant A. G. Slemmer abandoned Fort Barrancas and moved to Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island.

In Louisiana, Braxton Bragg and the state militia seized Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the arsenal at Baton Rouge.  William Tecumseh Sherman, then the head of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy (later Louisiana State University), called Bragg's actions "an act of war and a breach of common decency."  He resigned his post in protest but agreed to stay on until he could turn the school over to a successor.

In one of the more comic episodes of these final prewar days, the citizens of Smithville and Wilmington, North Carolina came down with secession fever and seized Forts Johnson and Caswell.  A few days later Governor John W. Ellis ordered the forts returned; North Carolina had not seceded and was not really even considering it.  The two caretakers, who had demanded receipts for the property, told the citizens they would take the forts back "if there was none of it broken, or none of the ammunition expended."

October 5, 1860: Governor Gist Writes to Other Southern Governors

As Election Day 1860 approached, it became more and more apparent that Abraham Lincoln was going to be elected president.  The young Republican Party still needed to sweep most of the Northern states, to win all the states they won in 1856 plus a couple more.  They had their sights set on Pennsylvania and Indiana.  Those states held elections for state offices in October and Republicans won handily, virtually guaranteeing that the states would also go to Lincoln in November.

On Friday, October 5, 1860, Governor William Henry Gist of South Carolina drafted letters to the governors of the cotton states.  In the letters, he virtually guaranteed that South Carolina would secede and wanted to know what their states would do.  He proposed "concert of action, which is so essential to success."  He declared that if any other state seceded, South Carolina would join them.  If not, South Carolina would go it alone if he could be assured that other states would follow.  The letters were delivered by his much younger cousin, States' Rights Gist.

From Bruce Catton's The Coming Fury:

The governors were by no means unrestrained in their enthusiasm when they wrote their replies.  As political veterans they could not get very far ahead of local sentiment, and local sentiment had not yet hardened.  Governor John W. Ellis, of North Carolina, wrote that the people of his state simply had not made up their minds what to do in case Lincoln should be elected:  "Some favor submission, some resistance, and others would await the course of events that might follow."  They probably would not think a Republican victory, in itself, proper cause for leaving the Union, although they would never support "the monstrous doctrine of coercion."  From Louisiana came similar words.  Governor Thomas O. Moore would need more than "the deplorable event" of a Republican victory to make him advise secession, and he believed most people in Louisiana felt the same way.  He did think that Louisiana should meet with other slave states to "endeavor to effect a complete harmony of action," but he feared this harmony would be hard to get.  To be sure, if the Federal government tried coercion, the case would be different; meanwhile, Louisiana was totally unprepared "for any warlike measures," and her arsenals were empty.

Mississippi was a different case. Governor John J. Pettus felt that his people would do anything in their power to keep the state "from passing under the Black Republican yoke," but Mississippi could not go it alone. He would call a special session of the legislature as soon as it was known that Lincoln had won the election, and he believed Mississippi would ask a council of the slave states; if such a council advised secession, Mississippi would probably go along. In Georgia, Governor Joseph E. Brown believed that a convention of the people, meeting sometime between election day and March 4, would determine the state's course of action. In his opinion the people would "wait for an overt act" rather than vote to go out of the Union, regardless of what other states might do, simply because Lincoln was elected. Still, "events not yet foreseen" might lead to more immediate action. Governor Andrew B. Moore, of Alabama, favored consultation among cotton-state executives. He did not think Alabama would secede alone, but "if two or more states will cooperate with her she will secede with them; or if South Carolina or any other Southern State should go out alone and the Federal Government should attempt to use force against her, Alabama will immediately rally to her rescue." Governor M. S. Perry, of Florida, felt that Florida could not take the lead in secession, "but will most assuredly cooperate with or follow the lead of any single Cotton State which may secede." A state convention would be called as soon as Lincoln's election became a fact; meanwhile, "if there is sufficient manliness at the South to strike for our rights, honor and safety, in God's name let it be done before the inauguration of Lincoln."

Presumably these men knew how the people in their states were thinking, and it is clear that even in the heart of the cotton belt a majority was not yet ready to secede and would not consider Lincoln's election adequate reason for secession. But the majority by now was at the mercy of events. It had been brought -- by fear, by suspicion, and by anger -- to a point just one step short of the final act; the smallest accident, the most casual misstep by some politician in Washington, might compel it to take that last step. Nor would it be necessary for the majority in all of the Southern states to be won over. The sense of regional solidarity had immense power, and where one state led, other states might well follow.

South Carolina would lead. Governor Gist would see to it.