The Cannons Roar: Fort Sumter and the Start of the Civil War—An Oral History by Bruce Chadwick

Author:Bruce Chadwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Captain Abner Doubleday

Captain Edward McCready, who had formerly been very intimate with the officers of the garrison, wrote a letter urging them to throw off their allegiance to the United States and enter into the Confederate service. No one took the trouble to answer it.

Even stranger, the soldiers read in various newspapers that the Fort Sumter crisis had become high-level theater up north.

* * *

Captain Abner Doubleday

Dramas founded on our occupation of Fort Sumter, and confinement there, were being acted in both Boston and New York. It was quite amusing to see our names in the playbills and to find that persons were acting our parts and spouting mock heroics on the stage.

Major Anderson had become a hero to the Republic as he and his men hung on day after day. He received hundreds of letters from well-wishers. Old men who had fought in the War of 1812 wrote him notes, as did giddy grade-school children. The legislatures of five states officially honored him. Babies were named after him and songs written about him. One town raised money to buy him an engraved sword. Towns accorded him thirty-three-gun salutes. There were laudatory notes from Republicans—and from Democrats, too.

This admiration was shared by many in Charleston. Their quarrel was with the government in Washington, not with the man caught in the middle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.