Today In Western History: WAR!!

April 12, 1860

The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay.

Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Because of his strong secessionist views and the widely held belief that he fired the first shot of the Battle of Fort Sumter, Edmund Ruffin is credited as “firing the first shot of the Civil War.”  

Edmund Ruffin, a firebarnd, long redited with firing the first cannon onto Ft. Sumter and starting the Civil War.
Edmund Ruffin, a firebarnd, long redited with firing the first cannon onto Ft. Sumter and starting the Civil War.

During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort.

Major Robert Anderson, Commander of Ft. Sumter, he lowered the flag as he left, and raised it again when the war was over.
Major Robert Anderson, Commander of Ft. Sumter, he lowered the flag as he left, and raised it again when the war was over.

Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”

Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President

As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana–had followed South Carolina’s lead.

In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first… and as it turns out, the ONLY, president of the Confederate States of America.

 Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA
Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA

When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.

 

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 Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com

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WESTERN HISTORY TODAY: Jefferson Davis Becomes President

 Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA
Jefferson Davis, President of Confedrate States of America

On this day in 1861, sJefferson DavisJefferson Davi, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi who served as U.S. secretary of war in the 1850s, receives word he has been selected president of the new Confederate States of America. Delegates at the Confederacy’s constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama, chose him for the job.

Davis was at his plantation, Brierfield, pruning rose bushes with his wife Varina when a messenger arrived from nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi. The presidency was not a position Davis wanted, but he accepted it out of a sense of duty to his new country. Varina later wrote of her husband’s reaction to the news: “Reading that telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes he told me like a man might speak of a sentence of death.”

Davis said of the job: “I have no confidence in my ability to meet its requirement. I think I could perform the function of a general.” He could see the difficulties involved in launching the new nation. “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles innumerable. We are without machinery, without means, and threatened by powerful opposition but I do not despond and will not shrink from the task before me.”

Davis was prescient in his concerns, and often drew sharp criticism during the Civil War, caused by his difficult personality.  Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, said Davis was “weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate.”

Davis remained president of the Confederacy until its government was dissolved on May 5, 1865. Less than a week later, he was captured by the Union and jailed for two years. He died at age 81 in New Orleans in 1889.

 

                                                                                      

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com