Road Trip Through History: Fort Sumter

My Own True Love and I are spending a long weekend in Charleston, South Carolina.  For me, it’s a vacation/work sandwich.  Yesterday we bopped around together doing history-buff stuff.*  Today he heads off for twenty-four hours with his grandson’s Cub Scout troop aboard the USS Yorktown while I settle in for a day of reading and writing.  Tomorrow, we resume bopping.

The center of our first day was a visit to Fort Sumter, where the Civil War officially began.**  As always, the National Park Service did an excellent job.

Because Fort Sumter is on a island in the mouth of Charleston’s harbor, the visit begins with a boat ride, offered through an official park vendor.**** I must admit, I grumbled at the idea of a narrated boat “tour” of the harbor with only hour on the ground at the fort. I should have had more faith.  A hour was just about the right amount of time.

If you have the choice, I recommend the first trip of the day because it includes a flag-raising ceremony.  The ranger began with a brief, impassioned account of  the fall of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, including a description of the role that the American flag played in the events on Sumter.  (Stay tuned for some of the details.)  Then she asked for help raising the flag.  Twenty or thirty visitors (including me and My Own True Love) lined up to help unfold and hoist the flag.  Before we began, she asked us to introduce ourselves to our neighbors in the line.  It was moving and meaningful—a moment of unity in which no one mentioned the election or the inauguration that was going on as we shook hands and remembered a time of national division.

Once the ceremony was over, we were  free to explore the ruins of the fort and the excellent small museum. We would have enjoyed the visit even if all we got out of it was a more detailed version of the events of April 12, 1861—the ranger was interesting, the boat ride of lovely, the weather was amazing.  But, as is so often the case, the NPS did a good job of putting the place in its broader historical context, including a small exhibit on the role of African-American slaves in the fort’s history.  Here are some of the things that caught my imagination:

The fort was built as part of a string of coastal fortifications, planned as a result of the inadequacy of coastal defense in the War of 1812. (At some level, armies always plan for the last war.  And really, what choice do they have?)  They built a man-made island in the mouth of Charleston’s Harbor in 1829, using sand and 70,000 tons of granite from New England.  Intended for a garrison of 650 men with 135 guns, the fort was almost completed by 1860 but it was not yet manned   When Anderson and his men arrived at the fort, they raised the American flag there for the first time.

The military professionals of the Union and Confederate armies were drawn from the same small pool of big fish:  Brigadier General Pierre G.T. Beauregard led the Confederate troops that bombarded Anderson and his men.  Anderson was Beauregard’s artillery instructor at West Point.  This is the kind of thing that would lead to dramatic tension—or charges of implausibility—if I wrote historical fiction.

Major Anderson was allowed to surrender with full honors, including the right to take his flag with him.  At the war’s end, on April 9, 1865, he raised the same flag over Fort Sumter  once more.

The story of Fort Sumter didn’t end with Anderson’s surrender.  The fort remained a Confederate stronghold for the next four years despite repeated Union efforts to recapture it.  The Confederate garrison never surrendered.  They withdrew from the island when Sherman’s march threatened the South Carolina capitol.

The ruined fort was brought back into service during the Spanish-American War, when the army constructed a large concrete battery on the former parade ground, and it remained in service as part of the coastal defense until Pearl Harbor, when it became clear that aviation was the name of the coastal defense game.

Don’t touch that dial.  More historical adventures from Charleston are coming up.

*And eating.  Because everything you hear about food in Charleston is true.  The only thing that saved us from dyspepsia and blimpitude has been lots and lots of walking. I strongly recommend Jestine’s Kitchen.  And pimento cheese.

**For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story or want a refresher, here’s a recap:

In November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president.  On December 20, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union.*** By March 2, a total of seven states had seceded and seized Federal forts and naval yards throughout the South.  Fort Sumter, an unfinished red brick fortress built on a man-made granite island,  was one of the few to remain in Federal hands, thanks to preemptory action by Major Robert Anderson.

Anderson commanded two companies—a total of 85 men, including musicians—at nearby Fort Moultrie.  Six days after South Carolina seceded, he decided Moultrie was impossible to defend and moved his troops in the night to Sumter.  The Confederate government saw Anderson’s transfer as an act of aggression.  (Unlike, say, seizing Federal forts.  Partisanship blinds us all.)

The fort became the emotional focal point of the conflict between Union and Confederacy.  The small garrison was cut off from resupply or reinforcement, but refused to surrender the fort to Confederate control. Anderson, a Kentucky native and former slaveholder, was praised as a hero in the North and reviled as a traitor in the South. President James Buchanan, at the end of his term of office, was unwilling to trigger civil war by attempting to relieve the besieged unit and equally unwilling to trigger a public outcry by recalling the troops from Sumter. He chose instead to leave the problem for his successor.

When Abraham Lincoln took office on March 4, the garrison at Sumter had less than six weeks of food left. Lincoln's cabinet told him it was impossible to relieve the fortress and urged him to evacuate Anderson's troops as a way of reducing tension between North and South. Popular opinion screamed for Lincoln to send reinforcements to the “gallant little band”.  With public opinion eager for action, and no sign that delay would improve the chances of reuniting the country, Lincoln chose to resupply the garrison but not send reinforcements unless the Confederates attacked either the fort or the supply ships—a compromise that pleased no one.

Shortly after midnight on April 12, with resupply ships on the way, the Confederate government gave Anderson until 4:00 AM to surrender. Anderson refused. At 4:30 AM, the bombardment began. Although they had neither the men nor supplies to mount a meaningful defense, the Union forces held out for a day and a half before surrendering.

The war had begun.

***No matter how contentious the recent election was, no one threatened to secede—unless I missed something.

****Only two round trips a day in January.  There are more in the high season, but there are also more people who want to go.  Plan ahead so you aren’t disappointed.

The Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of the (First) French Revolution

Several years ago a friend of mine was headed to Paris and asked for a recommendation of a book that would give her a clear account of the French Revolution.*  Somewhat abashedly, I suggested my own book on the history of socialism   which I believe gives a clear account of the various iterations of the French Revolution from 1798 through 1871.** (Luckily, she agreed.)  If she asked me today, I'd probably recommend Ian Davidson's The French Revolution: From Enlightenment to Tyranny as an introduction to the first French Revolution.

The French Revolution is a journalist's account of one of the most complicated and confusing events of the long eighteenth century.*** Davidson uses the skills he developed as a foreign affairs correspondent for Financial Times to create an even-handed step-by-step account of the events from August 2, 1788, when Louis XVI called a meeting of the États Généraux in the hopes of getting financial help through the execution of Maximilien Robespierre on July 28, 1794.  He assumes his reader is familiar with the catchwords and names associated with the French Revolution, but not with the details of its development.  He begins with a careful description of the economic and social conditions in France in the years before the war.  He identifies possible points of confusion for a modern reader: the Parlement for example was a law court, not a parliament.  He gives brief biographies of each of the players, bringing even the most familiar names into clearer focus.  Most importantly, he makes it clear that the Revolution began as a peaceful attempt at peaceful social change, with leaders who were dedicated to the rule of law, and that it remained largely peaceful for three years.

Davidson's The French Revolution is not a scholar's account of the French Revolution, and makes no claim to be.  it is instead a serious work of popular history, challenging enough to intrigue those already familiar with the revolution and accessible enough to engage those who are not.

*My Inner Reference Librarian is always happy to help.
**Yes.  There was more than one French Revolution.  This was the source of great confusion to me my first year in college.
***That's intended as a compliment. The best journalists are able to bring clarity to complicated issues.

 

The heart of this review appeared previously in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

 

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Pippi Longstocking Goes to War

(Okay, I admit it.  That's an inaccurate, click-bait of a title.)

Today Astrid Lindgren is famous as the creator of Pippi Longstocking:  the red-headed quirky rebel who proclaimed herself the strongest girl in the world.*  In World War II, Lindgren was a 30-something housewife and aspiring author.  Her war diaries, published posthumously in Sweden and recently translated into English, are a fascinating account of life in neutral Sweden during World War II.

If you read War Diaries, 1939-1945 hoping to get insight into the creative process behind Pippi Longstocking, which was published just before the end of the war. you will be disappointed.  There are few references to her writing.  If you want a wartime narrative written by an intelligent observer that offers a different perspective than the British accounts most familiar to American readers, Lindgren's your girl.

The diaries are a mixture of the personal and political. Marital problems, concerns about her son's difficulties at school and rumors about increased rationing are intermixed with her determination to document the course of the war.   She lists the menus for birthday dinners and holiday celebrations, commenting each time on how lucky Sweden is to have abundant food and fearing that each feast will be the last.  She pastes in newspaper clippings of critical events.

She also adds privileged information that adds depth to her reporting. Lindgren worked on the night shift for a government security agency responsible for censoring correspondence sent from or to other countries.  Although her work was so hush-hush that her children did not know what she did, she had no hesitation about copying and commenting on sections of the letters in her diaries, including letters describing the transportation of Jews to concentration camps in Poland as early as 1941.

Lindgren's War Diaries tell the story of the war as seen through the veil of Swedish neutrality—a veil that Lindgren recognized was perilously thin.  She records her relief and guilt over Sweden's relative prosperity, her shame over allowing German troops to travel through Sweden, and her fear that Russia will prove to be a greater threat to Sweden than Germany.  For those of you who are serious World War II buffs, it may all be alte wurst.  For me, it was a new approach to a familiar topic.**

*One of a long string of red-haired literary rebels and misfits who inspired and comforted  a certain red-haired future history buff.

**I'm beginning to see a theme here.  Sometimes I think I know nothing at all about history.

Much of this review appeared previously in Shelf Awareness for Readers