The chap­ter titled “Four Telegrams” presents a crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion dat­ed April 10, 1861, dur­ing the lead-up to the Civ­il War, involv­ing key fig­ures Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard and L. P. Walk­er. The cor­re­spon­dence begins with a telegram from Mont­gomery direct­ed to Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard in Charleston, urg­ing imme­di­ate action regard­ing Fort Sumter. Walk­er, as the Con­fed­er­ate Sec­re­tary of War, empha­sizes the neces­si­ty of demand­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the fort if Beau­re­gard con­firms the Wash­ing­ton Gov­ern­men­t’s intent to sup­ply it by force. He instructs Beau­re­gard to respond prompt­ly.

In response, Beau­re­gard acknowl­edges the direc­tive and states that the demand will be made at noon the fol­low­ing day. This trig­ger point is cru­cial, high­light­ing the tense atmos­phere lead­ing to con­flict, as both par­ties are acute­ly aware of the loom­ing con­fronta­tion.

Walk­er then sends anoth­er telegram to Beau­re­gard, sug­gest­ing that unless there are spe­cif­ic, per­son­al rea­sons for a noon demand, it would be more appro­pri­ate to make the request ear­li­er. Beau­re­gard tact­ful­ly coun­ters, stat­ing that the rea­sons for wait­ing until noon are indeed spe­cial.

These exchanges under­score the care­ful strate­giz­ing and urgency felt by Con­fed­er­ate lead­ers con­cern­ing Fort Sumter, which they view as piv­otal. The tone reflects a blend of mil­i­tary pro­to­col and the grav­i­ty of the moment, cap­tur­ing the ten­sion inher­ent in the ear­ly days of the con­flict. The con­cise nature of the telegrams also demon­strates the direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion style used in mil­i­tary cor­re­spon­dence, focus­ing on clar­i­ty and prompt­ness in light of the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion. This brief chap­ter thus sets the stage for the dra­mat­ic events that would soon unfold around Fort Sumter, mark­ing a sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.