Question of the Week: What would you have wanted to have if you were Major Robert Anderson?
If you were Major Robert Anderson inside Fort Sumter in April 1861, what would you rather suddenly have: 3 more months of food, 200 more soldiers, access to the steam-sloop USS Powhatan (which was diverted to Pensacola instead), or a detailed map of all Confederate positions in Charleston?
I am not sure any of these would have impacted the results long term, the fort still would have fallen into Confederate hands eventually.
If I had to pick one, I’d say passage out on the USS Powhatan, but again the fort would have fallen, it would have merely been a move to save face, and the war would have started several weeks later someplace else.
Three months of food. That would have postponed the crisis point, because Anderson wouldn’t have needed a resupply. Although I doubt if the Confederates would have had the patience ot wait another three months.
Couldn’t have fed the 200 troops.
Not sure what a single warship could have done.
Probably already had all the info on Beauregard’s positions he needed
The Fort Sumter was a political, not a military confrontation.
None of them would have made a difference in the ultimate Confederate decision to go to war, or the fate of the fort.
A chess board and four of five decks of cards, in order to pass the time. Fortunately, for the United States, Major Anderson conducted himself correctly and made good decisions. Full stop.
A new posting.
More food and Patriot Missiles.
The shooting had actually started that January when the “Star Of the Sea” was fired on and prevented from supplying the fort. So I think getting himself and his troops out of there from that point would have been a good choice.
Three 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 guns, mounted in a turret
Access to USS Powhatan is my guess. Anderson’s men, the 1st United States Artillery regiment, felt they could make it another week or two on their pork rations alone. Tangent time – A 20th Century soldier once said, “We had so much square spam that round spam was a delicacy.” But I diverge. More soldiers would have been more mouths to feed and wounds to bind, and I’m thinking Anderson could accurately guess the Confederate positions based on spyglass observation and from where the cannonballs were coming from. The multiple choice options bore the feel of a test question.
I would have wanted my force removed immediately by the U.S. Navy, or allowed to surrender, whereupon we would have gone to shore, been paroled, and sent north by train to Washington, D. C. Sumter had not the guns, soldiers or supplies to withstand any kind of attack, so occupying the fort was pointless; it now existed on South Carolina territory instead of U.S. territory and as such, it would be better for the politicians to sort things out rather than put soldiers’ lives needlessly at risk; and Lincoln’s chess move – forcing the South Carolinians to fire on the fort – precipitated a needless, horribly costly war. All could have been averted through negotiation rather than gunfire, and the failure to do that became America’s greatest folly and greatest tragedy.
It was always US territory. It had a right to be supplied and defended.
Well, that’s the rub. The two sides had incompatible goals. Lincoln was determined to preserve the Union, and Davis was determined to have a Confederacy. Lincoln wanted to continue the status quo in Charleston harbor, which is why additional rations was the best option for Anderson. Davis could have continued allow the stand off to continue as well, but chose to start shooting “sprinkle some blood in their faces,” as the strategy best suited accomplishing his goal. I think Lincoln probably wrong in thinking a cooling off period would allow secession fever to pass. Davis miscalculated the effect of firing on the flag on the North.
No country formally recognized the Confederate States of America as a sovereign nation. While some European powers like Great Britain and France recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent power during the Civil War, they never officially recognized its independence.
If the Confederate States has wished to negotiate, they should have never left the Union and the Congress. After all, they had a Supreme Court decision that basically annulled the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, and declared that enslaved persons were not US citizens.
Anthony Blinken