Lincoln's First Crisis by William Bruce Johnson

Author:William Bruce Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2020-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Steamer passing Ironclad Battery at Cumming’s Point as seen from Fort Sumter, February 13, 1861. Sketch by Brevet Captain Truman Seymour. George B. Davis et al., Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1891–1895). The Cartographic Research Laboratory, University of Alabama.

Despite the daily rounds of reconnaissance, the small steamers patrolling the harbor mouth, and the redundant sources of illumination, Hartstene feared that he would nevertheless miss small Union vessels transecting the bar and entering the harbor mouth at night and that Anderson’s gunners could and would sink Confederate vessels the moment the engagement began. On the night of April 10/11, he and Wigfall thus arranged for two rafts carrying pine to be anchored near the southwest side of the fort, with fires to be maintained on them so that “the guns may see to fire upon a party disembarking” at Sumter’s wharf.45 If Hartstene had considered that these fires would also backlight Fort Sumter and Morris Island, and thereby help the Union squadron navigate, he apparently decided that this risk was outweighed by the fires’ value in revealing vessels that had evaded the defenses at the harbor mouth, his greater concern.

The Revenue cutter Harriet Lane was named for President Buchanan’s niece, the dedicatee of the popular ballad “Listen to the Mocking Bird.” Hattie Lane had served (brilliantly, by all accounts) as her bachelor uncle’s hostess, both when he was minister in London and then as president. Nathaniel Hawthorne described her as “extremely self-possessed and well poised, without affectation or assumption, but quietly conscious of rank, as much so as if she were an Earl’s daughter.”46 Rumors circulated of a possible match with Washington’s most eligible bachelor, Lord Lyons, the British envoy. The vessel christened in her name, with a complement of ninety officers and crew, was fit for royalty, having been chosen as the Prince of Wales’s vessel during his visit to the United States in the autumn of 1860.47 In its present voyage to Charleston, it brought along B. S. Osbon, the by-now-famous reporter for the New York World. Osbon, who missed coverage of the Star of the West incursion, had covered the royal visit and befriended the cutter’s captain, John Faunce, who ended up giving him a berth as the only reporter in the Union squadron.

Harriet Lane departed New York Harbor under instructions to steam south for twelve hours before opening sealed orders, which included hauling down from the masthead the Treasury Department pennant and ensign and hoisting in their stead the flags of the Union and U.S. Navy. Upon hearing that they were about to go into battle against the Confederates at Charleston, some of the crew blurted out mutinous talk to the effect that they had not signed on as warriors. Captain Faunce replied:

I appreciate your surprise and point of view. Still, as your commanding officer, I will say right here and now that every man must do his duty and obey orders implicitly, or, by God, he will never

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