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    Biography

    The Demon of Unrest

    by

    Query sur­round­ing the fort’s rein­force­ment prompt­ed Major Ander­son to seek out com­pre­hen­sive assess­ments from his offi­cers regard­ing the nec­es­sary per­son­nel and ships to ensure Fort Sumter’s defense. On Feb­ru­ary 28, Ander­son request­ed indi­vid­ual reports from his offi­cers, hop­ing their eval­u­a­tions of the daunt­ing task of rein­forc­ing the fort would high­light the immense logis­ti­cal chal­lenges involved. By col­lect­ing these assess­ments, Ander­son sought to empha­size the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, there­by dis­cour­ag­ing any attempts by the Lin­coln admin­is­tra­tion to ini­ti­ate aggres­sive actions that could lead to fur­ther esca­la­tion in an already volatile envi­ron­ment.

    Cap­tain Fos­ter, the chief engi­neer, pro­vid­ed the most detailed and alarm­ing esti­mate. Accord­ing to his cal­cu­la­tions, secur­ing the bat­ter­ies at Cum­mings Point and Mor­ris Island would require 3,000 reg­u­lar troops or 10,000 vol­un­teers. In addi­tion, anoth­er 3,000 reg­u­lars would be nec­es­sary to hold Sullivan’s Island. Once these posi­tions were secured, main­tain­ing con­trol would neces­si­tate a force of 10,000 reg­u­lars or 30,000 vol­un­teers due to the expect­ed resis­tance from the South Car­olini­ans, who would like­ly be sup­port­ed by neigh­bor­ing states. Foster’s report under­scored the sheer scale of the mil­i­tary pres­ence need­ed to assert con­trol, indi­cat­ing a lev­el of mil­i­tary com­mit­ment that was beyond what was cur­rent­ly avail­able. These esti­mates helped frame the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, empha­siz­ing the size and scope of an oper­a­tion that would stretch Union resources to their lim­it.

    Cap­tain Tru­man Sey­mour, who spe­cial­ized in artillery, pre­sent­ed an even more dire analy­sis of the sit­u­a­tion. He empha­sized that any plans to resup­ply Fort Sumter by sea had become impos­si­ble due to the height­ened vig­i­lance and prepa­ra­tions by the Con­fed­er­ates. Sey­mour warned that any attempt to send sup­plies open­ly would fail unless the ves­sels were specif­i­cal­ly designed to with­stand heavy gun­fire, mak­ing it a dan­ger­ous and imprac­ti­cal option. Fur­ther­more, Sey­mour cau­tioned that any sub­stan­tial troop move­ment towards the fort would prompt an imme­di­ate and over­whelm­ing Con­fed­er­ate response. He pre­dict­ed that a sig­nif­i­cant defen­sive force, poten­tial­ly up to 20,000 trained marks­men, could be mobi­lized to defend Charleston Har­bor, sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­ing the risk of cat­a­stroph­ic loss­es. The sit­u­a­tion, he argued, resem­bled the siege of Sev­astopol dur­ing the Crimean War, where entrenched defens­es cre­at­ed an insur­mount­able bar­ri­er for attack­ers. Seymour’s warn­ing reflect­ed the over­whelm­ing odds that any Union forces would face in attempt­ing to invade the har­bor, and his assess­ment rein­forced the dire nature of the task ahead.

    Addi­tion­al reports from oth­er offi­cers only added to the grow­ing real­iza­tion of the scale of the oper­a­tion required. Most offi­cers esti­mat­ed that an invad­ing force of between 3,000 and 10,000 men would be need­ed, all of whom would require naval pro­tec­tion to ensure their safe deploy­ment. Quar­ter­mas­ter Hall’s sug­ges­tion of deploy­ing sev­en war­ships was made with the hope that they could help shield the troops from Con­fed­er­ate fire, but even he acknowl­edged the uncer­tain­ty of suc­cess. He cau­tioned that these efforts would rely on improb­a­ble cir­cum­stances, with fail­ure being the most like­ly out­come. The wide­spread con­sen­sus among the offi­cers paint­ed a grim pic­ture: attempt­ing to rein­force Fort Sumter was not only high­ly dif­fi­cult but near­ly impos­si­ble with­out sig­nif­i­cant changes to the cur­rent mil­i­tary strat­e­gy and avail­able resources.

    These assess­ments were then relayed to Wash­ing­ton by Major Ander­son, who acknowl­edged the stark real­i­ty pre­sent­ed by the offi­cers. After review­ing the infor­ma­tion, Ander­son expressed his agree­ment with the over­whelm­ing con­clu­sion that a force of at least 20,000 well-trained troops would be need­ed for any attempt to rein­force Fort Sumter effec­tive­ly. This was a fig­ure that exceed­ed the size of the entire U.S. Army at the time, under­scor­ing the immense chal­lenge that the Union would face in try­ing to main­tain con­trol over Fort Sumter amidst the esca­lat­ing ten­sions. The scale of the oper­a­tion high­light­ed the logis­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties involved, with the need for thou­sands of sol­diers, war­ships, and sup­plies to exe­cute a mis­sion that would ulti­mate­ly test the Union’s mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties and its resolve. This assess­ment made it clear that the chal­lenges of for­ti­fy­ing and resup­ply­ing Fort Sumter were far more com­plex than most peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton had ini­tial­ly real­ized, set­ting the stage for the mon­u­men­tal deci­sions that would come in the days ahead.

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