Word: sumter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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FIRST BLOOD, THE STORY OF FORT SUMTER (373 pp.)-W. A. Swanberg-Scrib...
Cast adrift by the Government, Major Anderson stretched his orders beyond the snapping point, moved his men from Moultrie to Fort Sumter by night. When Southerners in Washington got the word, they rushed to the Old Public Functionary, who crushed out his cigar in the palm of his hand. "My God!" cried James Buchanan. "Are calamities never to come singly! I call God to witness . . . that this is not only without but against my orders...
...Northern brethren"), to see his dream of disunion come true. This-4:30 a.m.. April 12, 1861-was his great moment. Edmund Ruffin stepped proudly forward, pulled the lanyard of a columbiad and sent the first of some 600 rebel shells crashing into Fort Sumter; thus began the Civil...
Author W. A. (Sickles the Incredible) Swanberg magnifies Sumter's importance for dramatic effect, tending to cast it as an actual cause of the Civil War instead of the incident that set off a conflict long inevitable. Nonetheless, in the policies of drift and duplicity that led to Edmund Ruffin's pulling the lanyard, and in the strains it placed on the minds and loyalties of the men involved, Sumter can serve as a microcosm for the Civil...
...forts in and around Charleston harbor, late in November 1860, than he saw that it could be successfully invaded by a herd of cows; indeed, a wandering Guernsey now and again did enter the fort by crossing the sand dunes heaped wall-high at several points. Anderson recognized Fort Sumter, then unoccupied, as stronger than Moultrie. He urged that it be garrisoned-in a message to the War Department that is as meaningful to 1958 as to 1860: "Nothing will be better calculated to prevent bloodshed than our being found in such an attitude that it would be madness...