THE MAKING OF A NATION #98- Abraham Lincoln, Part 3 (Attack on Fort Sumter)

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2005-1-19

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.

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Just before sunrise on the morning of April twelfth,
eighteen-sixty-one, the first shot was fired in the American Civil
War. A heavy mortar roared, sending a shell high over the harbor at
Charleston, South Carolina. The shell dropped and exploded above
Fort Sumter, a United States fort on an island in the harbor.

The explosion was a signal for all southern guns surrounding the
fort to open fire. Shell after shell smashed into the island fort.

The booming of the cannons woke the people of Charleston. They
rushed to the harbor and cheered as the bursting shells lighted the
dark sky.

VOICE TWO:

Confederate leaders ordered the
attack after President Abraham Lincoln refused to withdraw the small
force of American soldiers at Sumter. Food supplies at the fort were
very low. And southerners expected hunger would force the soldiers
to leave. But Lincoln announced he was sending a ship to Fort Sumter
with food.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his commander in
Charleston, General [Pierre] Beauregard, to destroy the fort before
the food could arrive.

VOICE ONE:

The attack started from Fort Johnson across the harbor from
Sumter. A Virginia Congressman, Roger Pryor, was visiting Fort
Johnson when the order to fire was given. The fort's commander asked
Pryor if he would like the honor of firing the mortar that would
begin the attack. "No," answered Pryor, and his voice shook. "I
cannot fire the first gun of the war."

But others could. And the attack began.

VOICE TWO:

At Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson and his men waited three
hours before firing back at the Confederate guns.

Anderson could not use his most powerful cannons. They were in
the open at the top of the fort, where there was no protection for
the gunners. Too many of his small force would be lost if he tried
to fire these guns.

So Anderson had his men fire the smaller cannon from
better-protected positions. These, however, did not do much damage
to the Confederate guns.

VOICE ONE:

The shelling continued all day. A big cloud of smoke rose high in
the air over Fort Sumter.

The smoke was seen by United States navy ships a few miles
outside Charleston Harbor. They had come with the ship bringing food
for the men at Sumter. There were soldiers on these ships. But they
could not reach the fort to help Major Anderson. Confederate boats
blocked the entrance to the harbor. And confederate guns could
destroy any ship that tried to enter.

The commander of the naval force, Captain [Gustavus] Fox, had
hoped to move the soldiers to Sumter in small boats. But the sea was
so rough that the small boats could not be used. Fox could only
watch and hope for calmer seas.

VOICE TWO:

Confederate shells continued to smash into Sumter throughout the
night and into the morning of the second day. The fires at Fort
Sumter burned higher. And smoke filled the rooms where soldiers
still tried to fire their cannons.

About noon, three men arrived at the fort in a small boat. One of
them was Louis Wigfall, a former United States senator from Texas,
now a Confederate officer. He asked to see Major Anderson.

"I come from General Beauregard," he said. "It is time to put a
stop to this, sir. The flames are raging all around you. And you
have defended your flag bravely. Will you leave, sir?" Wigfall
asked.

VOICE ONE:

Major Anderson was ready to stop fighting. His men had done all
that could be expected of them. They had fought well against a much
stronger enemy. Anderson said he would surrender, if he and his men
could leave with honor.

Wigfall agreed. He told Anderson to lower his flag and the firing
would stop.

Down came the United States flag. And up went the white flag of
surrender. The battle of Fort Sumter was over.

More than four-thousand shells had been fired during the
thirty-three hours of fighting. But no one on either side was
killed. One United States soldier, however, was killed the next day
when a cannon exploded as Anderson's men prepared to leave the fort.

VOICE TWO:

The news of Anderson's surrender reached Washington late
Saturday, April thirteenth. President Lincoln and his cabinet met
the next day and wrote a declaration that the president would
announce on Monday.

In it, Lincoln said powerful forces had seized control in seven
states of the south. He said these forces were too strong to be
stopped by courts or policemen. Lincoln said troops were needed. He
requested that the states send him seventy-five-thousand soldiers.
He said these men would be used to get control of forts and other
federal property seized from the Union.

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln knew he had the support of his own party. He also wanted
northern Democrats to give him full support. So, Sunday evening, a
Republican congressman visited the top Democrat of the north,
Senator Stephen Douglas.

The congressman urged Douglas to go to the White House and tell
Lincoln that he would do all he could to help put down the rebellion
in the south. At first, Douglas refused. He said Lincoln had removed
Democrats -- friends of his -- from government jobs and had given
the jobs to Republicans. Douglas said he didn't like this. Anyway,
he said, Lincoln probably did not want his advice.

The congressman, George Ashmun, urged Douglas to forget party
politics. He said Lincoln and the country needed the Senator's help.
Douglas finally agreed to talk with Lincoln. He and Ashmun went
immediately to the White House.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln welcomed his old political opponent. He explained his
plans and read to Douglas the declaration he would announce the next
day.

Douglas said he agreed with every word of it except, he said,
seventy-five-thousand soldiers would not be enough. Remembering his
problems with southern extremists, he urged Lincoln to ask for
two-hundred-thousand men. He told the president, "You do not know
the dishonest purposes of those men as well as I do."

Lincoln and Douglas talked for two hours. Then the Senator gave a
statement for the newspapers. He said he still opposed the
administration on political questions. But, he said, he completely
supported Lincoln's efforts to protect the Union.

Douglas was to live for only a few more months. He spent this
time working for the Union. He traveled through the states of the
northwest, making many speeches. Douglas urged Democrats everywhere
to support the Republican government. He told them, "There can be no
neutrals in this war -- only patriots or traitors."

VOICE ONE:

Throughout the north, thousands of men rushed to answer Lincoln's
call for troops. Within two days, a military group from Boston left
for Washington. Other groups formed quickly in northern cities and
began training for war.

Lincoln received a different answer, however, from the border
states between north and south.

Virginia's governor said he would not send troops to help the
north get control of the south. North Carolina's governor said the
request violated the Constitution. He would have no part of it.
Tennessee said it would not send one man to help force southern
states back into the Union. But it said it would send fifty-thousand
troops to defend southern rights.

Lincoln got the same answer from the governors of Kentucky,
Arkansas, and Missouri. For several days, it seemed that all these
states would secede and join the southern confederacy.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln worried most about Virginia, the powerful state just
across the Potomac River from Washington. A secession convention
already was meeting at the state capital. On April seventeenth, the
convention voted to take Virginia out of the Union.

Virginia's vote to secede forced an American army officer to make
a most difficult decision. The officer was Colonel Robert E. Lee, a
citizen of Virginia.

The army's top commander, General Winfield Scott, had called Lee
to Washington. Scott believed Lee was the best officer in the army.
Lincoln agreed. He asked Lee to take General Scott's job, to become
the army chief.

Lee was offered the job on the same day that Virginia left the
Union. He felt strong ties to his state. But he also loved the
Union.

His decision will be our story in the next program of THE MAKING
OF A NATION.

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VOICE ONE:

You have been listening to the Special English program, THE
MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Stuart Spencer and Jack
Moyles. THE MAKING OF A NATION can be heard Thursdays.