ns of their officers
came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better.
Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States
largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was thus a
god-send.

April 8th, Governor Pickens received notice from President Lincoln that
an attempt would be made to provision that fort. Thereupon General
Beauregard, who had left the United States army to take charge of the
fortifications at Charleston, was ordered by President Davis to demand
its evacuation. Major Anderson replied that they should be starved out
by the 15th, and would leave the fort then unless his Government sent
supplies. This answer was held unsatisfactory, and at 3.20 on the
morning of April 12th Beauregard notified Anderson that his batteries
would open fire in one hour.

Fort Sumter stood on an artificial island at the entrance of the harbor.
It was pentagonal in shape, the walls of brick, eight feet thick and
forty feet high. The parapet was pierced for 140 guns, but only 48 were
in condition for use. The garrison, including some 40 workmen and a
band, numbered 128. Surrounding the fort on all sides except toward the
sea, and distant from 1,300 to 2,500 yards, 19 Confederate batteries
were in position, mounting 47 cannon and mortars, and manned by 3,000 or
4,000 volunteers. These works were provided with bomb-proofs made of
railroad iron or of palmetto logs and sand.

The wharves, roofs, and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant
crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle
loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to
the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful
trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun.
One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the
stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery.
Shells scream through the air and explode above the doomed work, and
great cannon-balls bury themselves in the brick walls. Still Sumter
speaks not. Anderson is waiting for daylight. About six o'clock he
breakfasts his garrison on pork and water, the only provisions left. An
hour later the embrasures are opened, the black guns run out, and Sumter
hurls back her answer to the voice of rebellion. The bombs making it
unsafe to use the barbette cannons of the open rampart, Anderson was
confined to his twenty-one casemate pieces, m