March 30, 1861 (Saturday)

This weeks edition of the Harper's Weekly is available:  a number of pictures and stories about Fort Sumter and other interesting anecdotes of the day.



Civil War Daily Gazette, "Everything Quiet, Must Be Some Action Soon." March 30, 1861.  The Gazette gives an update of today's news around Fort Sumter.

"In Charleston, the members of the State Convention were given a tour of Fort Moultrie and Morris Island.  Many large guns were fired in their honor, some with live shot.  Anderson was able to take note of which batteries had increased in strength.

On this same date he wired Washington wondering about Fort Sumter's surrender.  Governor Pickens wired Confederate Secretary of War LeRoy Pope Walker telling him of the arrival of 2,000 muskets for General Beauregard.  'Everything quiet,' Pickens writes in closing, 'must be some action soon.' "


The Diary of William Howard Russell, hat tip Daily Observations from The Civil War:

"The religious observance of the day was not quite as strict as it would be in England.  The Puritan aversion to ceremonials and formulary observances has apparently affected the American world, even as far south as this.  The people of color were in the streets dressed in their best..."  (some very derogatory remarks follow...read the link above to get the details.)

"It is on such radical differences of ideas as these, that the whole of the quarrel, which is widening every day, is founded.  The Federal Compact, at the very outset, was written on a torn sheet of paper, and time has worn away the artificial cement by which it was kept together.  The corner stone of the Constitution had a crack in it, which the heat and fury of faction have widened into a fissure from top to bottom, never to be closed again."

"In the evening, as were we going home, notwithstanding the cold, we saw a number of ladies sitting out on the door steps, in white dresses.  The streets were remarkably quiet and deserted; all the colored population had been sent to bed long ago.  The fire bell, as usual, made an alarm or two about midnight."