In Baltimore, Pinkerton himself rented a house on South Street to use as his headquarters. “The building I had selected was admirably adapted for my purpose,” he wrote later, “and was so constructed that entrance could be gained to it from all four sides, through alleyways that led in from neighboring streets.” He also rented an office downtown, which he occupied in the guise of “John H. Hutchinson,” a fictive stockbroker from Charleston. One of his operatives, Timothy Webster, managed to join a volunteer militia in Perrymansville, Maryland, that had the stated goal of repelling invasion from the North. Webster soon found that its true intent was to ensure that “no damned Yankee could ever get through to sit in the Presidential chair.”

  Kate Warne, deploying an understanding of Southern men and manners gained from a prior investigation in Alabama, pinned a blue cockade to her clothing and posed as a zealous secessionist; she gained entrée to the highest levels of Baltimore society. Still another operative—Harry Davies, under the alias Joseph Howard—claimed to have won an introduction to the alleged head of an assassination cabal in Baltimore. He was then invited to participate in a clandestine ceremony held in a dark room, where participants swore themselves to secrecy and drew lots for the privilege of killing Lincoln. The coveted ballots, eight of them, were marked in red. Once Lincoln was dead, the assassins would board a waiting steamship and flee south to what they expected would be a hero’s welcome.

  Pinkerton claimed that he, too, had met the cabal’s ringleader, Cypriano Ferrandini, a Baltimore barber, and heard him vow, “Lincoln shall die in this city.”

  Washington

  Crisis

  January 1–8

  On New Year’s Day, Edmund Ruffin left his friend’s plantation outside Gainesville, Florida, and resumed his journey to the state capital, Tallahassee, to attend the state’s secession convention. Passing again through the rail nexus at Baldwin, where he had to wait five hours for his next train, he saw numerous telegrams sent from both Charleston and Washington that provided final confirmation of Major Anderson’s move to Fort Sumter, supplemented by reports that some sort of Union effort to resupply the fort might be underway. He welcomed this. “Probably this news, and the beginning of war, with some bloodshed, will serve to determine quicker the position of the Convention,” he wrote. Florida seemed inclined to wait for other states to declare their intentions. But, he wrote, “this is no time to advocate delay.”

  He reached Tallahassee on January 3 for the scheduled beginning of the convention only to find that the delegates had voted to postpone the start for two days to give fifteen delayed members time to arrive. That day, January 5, happened to be Ruffin’s sixty-seventh birthday. At a time when the median age of Americans was 19.4 years (compared with 38.3 in 2020) and life expectancy was 39.4 (78.9), this was quite old, but Ruffin seemed quick and energetic. The adjective most often applied to him in press reports was “venerable.”

  The convention opened at noon and, after various preliminary actions, approved a motion to allow Ruffin to take a seat in the hall itself among the delegates. He was escorted to the floor by two deputies in an ostentatious manner. “I would have preferred a less ceremonious introduction,” he wrote in his diary, “but I could not avoid it.” His sincerity here is doubtful, for he loved nothing more than being the object of elaborate public attention.

  * * *

  —

  On Wednesday, January 2, President Buchanan reconvened his cabinet, now to discuss the pressing question of whether to send reinforcements to Major Anderson.

  The cabinet called for the South Carolina commissioners’ last letter, the one Buchanan had officially declined to receive, and now had it read aloud. The effect was striking. When read silently as mute text the letter was bitter and aggrieved; read aloud, it was a bellicose rant. “After this letter,” exulted Secretary of State Black, “the cabinet will be unanimous.” Interior Secretary Thompson, true to his secessionist bent (Nicolay and Hay referred to him as “the traitor Thompson”), still argued against reinforcement, but the rest of the cabinet, with its new pro-Union orientation, was in favor.

  Buchanan knew that events had forced his hand. “It is now all over,” he said, “and reinforcements must be sent.”

  * * *

  —

  For the War Department the question now became how to send the reinforcements. General Scott by this point had begun to rethink the wisdom of sending the Brooklyn to reinforce Fort Sumter. The ship’s draft was so deep that it would only be able to cross the Charleston Bar at certain times; also, pulling so many troops from Fort Monroe in Virginia, the Union’s most important active fortress, would deplete its garrison at a time when its strategic value seemed to grow by the day.

  On January 2, the general canceled the Brooklyn mission in favor of a new plan inspired by several civic-minded businessmen from New York who offered to send volunteer troops to Sumter aboard a commercial steamer. The volunteers were rejected, the ship accepted. An Army staff officer headed north to New York City, and on the next evening, Thursday, met with the ship’s agent and its owner to negotiate the cost of chartering and supplying the vessel, a large side-wheeler in regular service to Havana and New Orleans named the Star of the West.

  The plan called for utmost secrecy. The ship would depart from New York as if on one of its regular voyages but would pick up two hundred well-armed U.S. Army regulars at Governor’s Island in New York Harbor before heading south. Telegrams were to be avoided for fear of interception, with all telegraphy between Governor’s Island and surrounding cities suspended for the duration of the voyage. Whenever the ship came in sight of another vessel, the soldiers were to go below decks; they would hide there as well when the ship approached Charleston. The plan was kept secret even from Interior Secretary Thompson out of the quite reasonable concern that he would reveal it to his Carolina contacts.

  Preparations began at once, and on Saturday, January 5, at five p.m., the Star of the West began its voyage south, pausing to pick up the soldiers. At about nine o’clock it exited New York Harbor at Sandy Hook and entered the Atlantic.

  * * *

  —

  That day the War Department received a letter from Major Anderson that he had mailed from Fort Sumter nearly a week earlier, on New Year’s Eve. Ordinarily the letter would have taken about two days to make it to Washington; now, for whatever reason—possibly interference by Charleston authorities—it had taken six days. Anderson may have been in a contemplative end-of-year mood when he wrote it, for he expressed quiet satisfaction at having moved to Sumter and bolstering its defenses. “The more I reflect upon the matter,” he wrote, “the stronger are my convictions that I was right in coming here.”

  As a consequence, he wrote, he felt no urgency to be reinforced. The government could move troops to the fort “at its leisure.” Soap, candles, and coal were in short supply, Anderson acknowledged, but added, “we can cheerfully put up with the inconvenience of doing without them, for the satisfaction we feel in the knowledge that we can command this harbor as long as our Government wishes to keep it.”

  So contrary was the tenor of this letter to the urgency Anderson had conveyed in previous dispatches that Buchanan abruptly canceled the Star of the West relief mission. The War Department sent a telegram to naval authorities in New York ordering them to halt the sailing, but the message arrived too late, and the only means of calling the ship back was to send a faster ship in pursuit.

  General Scott again requisitioned the screw sloop Brooklyn. This time he directed its captain to overtake the Star of the West and deliver the cancellation orders directly to the officer in charge of the mission, Lt. Charles R. Woods. Under no circumstances, however, was the Brooklyn to cross the bar into Charleston Harbor.

  Another factor influencing the dispatch of the Brooklyn may have been Buchanan’s realization that the secrecy upon which the Star of the West mission so heavily rested had clearly been compromised. In New York, reporters accustomed to monitoring the arrivals and departures of ships had noticed an unusual degree of activity. On Monday, January 7, the New York Tribune reported that the Star of the West had departed amid a fog of mystery. “This steamer cleared on Saturday for Havana and New Orleans. Rumors were rife that she was to convey troops to Charleston, but the story was ridiculed at the office of the owners, and they requested its contradiction.” The Tribune noted, however, that several people associated with the ship “said that she was going to Charleston, and would take on troops in the stream during the night.”

  * * *

  —

  At Fort Sumter, Major Anderson had no idea that the Star of the West was underway, or that the Brooklyn was speeding along behind it. No message had been sent by telegraph for fear it would be intercepted. The first formal notice to him was sent by regular mail from New York on the day of the Star of the West’s departure in a communiqué that contained a crucial instruction: If the ship was fired upon, the guns of Fort Sumter “may be employed to silence such fire; and you may act in like manner in case a fire is opened upon Fort Sumter itself.” Just how long it would take for the letter to reach Anderson was anyone’s guess.

  In the meantime, Anderson had a pleasant surprise. His wife, Eba, feeling she must do something to support him, decided that despite her infirmity she would go to Charleston and try to see him. She recruited the help of a man who had been Anderson’s orderly during the Mexican War, Peter Hart, by now a member of the New York City Police Department. Hart, ever loyal, not only agreed to escort her, but also to join the Sumter garrison, with the idea that Anderson would benefit simply by having him at his side. This suited Hart; he craved a chance to get into the fray. Hart and Eba left New York by train on January 3 and arrived in Charleston three days later. Governor Pickens approved Eba’s visit but balked at first at letting Hart go along. He finally assented on condition that Hart agree to serve only in a civilian role.

  Eba’s arrival was a complete surprise to Anderson, who raced to the end of the wharf and exclaimed, “My glorious wife!”

  The men found this meeting to be very “affecting,” according to Asst. Surgeon Crawford. No one at the fort had any foreknowledge of the visit, but the garrison was delighted. The visit briefly dispelled the winter gloom and for a time lifted the soldiers’ sense of utter isolation. “Her arrival,” wrote Crawford in his journal, “was most gratifying to us all.”

  Eba was so exhausted from travel and her persistent lethargy that she had to be carried up a stairway to reach Anderson’s rooms in the officers quarters. The two had dinner. What else transpired has been lost between the sheets of history. She remained at the fort until four o’clock.

  The visit eased Eba’s concerns. “She felt much easier in her mind,” Captain Doubleday wrote, “now that the major had Hart to look after him.”

  She began her return journey that evening.

  The garrison continued its drive to strengthen the fort’s defenses and mount more guns. On January 5, Asst. Surgeon Crawford wrote to his brother, A.J., to tell him about the measures being taken to repel an attack by Carolina forces, which seemed inevitable.

  “My arrangements for the hospital are all made,” he wrote. “My amputating table ready, and the lint, bandages, and instruments all prepared.”

  Charleston Harbor

  Crossing the Bar

  January 8

  The Star of the West met unseasonably fine weather and made good time. At one point it anchored off the coast of North Carolina so the men aboard could fish. On Tuesday afternoon, January 8, the officer in charge, Lieutenant Woods, issued guns and ammunition to the two hundred troops aboard. He did not know that the secret of their voyage had been revealed, let alone that the mission had been canceled and that the Brooklyn had been dispatched to deliver the news.

  At midnight, as the Star approached Charleston, its captain, John McGowan, ordered all lights aboard extinguished. A new moon with its attendant lack of lunar illumination made the darkness complete but also allowed the soldiers to come on deck. An hour and a half later the ship reached the Charleston Bar, where McGowan discovered that the harbor lighthouses had been darkened and a key navigational buoy removed. Even with an experienced pilot aboard, he found the darkness and lack of navigational guides daunting. He resorted to the ancient technique of measuring depth by sounding, wherein a crewman lowered a plummet, typically made of lead, into the sea until it touched bottom or until enough cord had played out to provide assurance that the ship would not run aground. “We proceeded with caution, running very slow and sounding, until about 4 a.m, being then in 4 ½ fathoms water [about 27 feet], when we discovered a light through the haze which at the time covered the horizon.” This light, McGowan concluded, must have been cast by the small lighthouse, or “range light,” at Fort Sumter itself.

  Later, in his official report, Lieutenant Woods would offer a less-than-scientific description for their nighttime approach: He called it “groping in the dark.”

  McGowan and his pilot used the Sumter light to take their bearings and then proceeded southwest toward the entrance to the main shipping channel. McGowan did not dare cross the bar in such darkness and resolved to “hove to” until sunrise. Time was running short, however. The bar was tricky to cross in the best of conditions, but now an ebb tide had begun drawing seawater out of the harbor, lowering the depth over the bar and making it even more treacherous.

  * * *

  —

  Daybreak brought a troubling discovery. A steamer, obviously on watch, lay nearby at a point between the ship and shore. McGowan made no effort to disguise the fact that the Star of the West was an American vessel; he kept its flag aloft.

  The guard steamer ignited a blue light and two red lights, apparently a signal meant to elicit a response from McGowan as to his ship’s identity and purpose. When he did not reply, the guard steamer hurried off and crossed the bar into the harbor, still burning lights but now also firing rockets. McGowan followed warily.

  Up ahead both Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie became visible in the haze. An American flag flew over Sumter, no flag over Moultrie. McGowan tried to keep as much distance as possible from Moultrie, and this brought him close to the north end of Morris Island at the opposite shore of the bay, half a mile to his left. Sumter lay dead ahead.

  The ship’s lookouts spotted an unfamiliar flag flying over Morris Island: brilliant red, very large (later determined to measure seven by ten feet), and emblazoned with a white palmetto tree. It flew from a point inland of the island’s beach. The lookouts saw no sign of guns or any other military presence.

  Fort Moultrie was their primary concern. Thankfully Moultrie’s guns remained silent.

  * * *

  —

  At Fort Sumter that morning Capt. Abner Doubleday woke early. He took his spyglass to the parapet, as usual, and scanned the horizon toward the bar. He was alone. Major Anderson was in his bed in the fort’s officers quarters.

  The red palmetto flag, Doubleday knew, marked the location of a hidden gun battery with five cannon whose installation he and his fellow officers had monitored. It had been built by enslaved workers and appeared to be manned by cadets from the Citadel, who were quartered in an adjacent former smallpox hospital. The orientation of its guns affirmed that its purpose was not to fire on Fort Sumter but rather to defend the shipping channel against incursions by Union ships.

  Rumors of a possible relief mission had filtered to Sumter, notably in a newspaper brought over the day before in a boat carrying a group of laborers. It reported that the Star of the West had departed days earlier from New York. No one at the garrison took the rumor seriously, Doubleday wrote later. “It was hard to believe the Government would send to us a mercantile steamer—a mere transport, utterly unfitted to contend with shore batteries—when it could dispatch a man-of-war furnished with all the means and appliances to repel force by force.”

  Even so, Doubleday had taken to regularly observing the bar for inbound ships. This morning his vigilance was rewarded. “As I looked seaward,” he wrote, “I saw a large steamer pass the bar and enter the Morris Island channel. It had the ordinary United States flag up; and as it evidently did not belong to the navy, I came to the conclusion it must be the Star of the West.”

  As he watched, a boll of white smoke burst from the battery on Morris Island, followed an instant later by the sound of the discharge. The shot landed in the channel ahead, well away from the ship, and seemed meant to get its captain’s attention and stop his advance.

  The ship kept coming. A new flag appeared on its foremast, “an immense United States garrison-flag,” Doubleday wrote.

  Doubleday turned and raced down a stairwell to Major Anderson’s rooms.

  Star of the West

  Under Fire

  January 9

  Now the battery took aim at the ship itself. The men on deck could follow the progress of the balls as they arced through the air. Several flew overhead.

  “One shot just passed clear of the pilot-house,” Captain McGowan wrote, “another passed between the smoke-stack and walking beams of the engine, another struck the ship just abaft the fore-rigging and stove in the planking, while another came within an ace of carrying away the rudder.” The walking beams, a crucial component of the ship’s propulsion system, transferred power from its steam pistons to the giant side wheels. One shot came bounding across the surface of the water and, according to Lieutenant Woods, “struck us in the fore-chains, about two feet above the water line, and just below where the man was throwing the lead.” This was pronounced led and referred to the plummet the crew was using to conduct the sounding.