April 2, 1861 (Tuesday)

New Beginnings

Following up on the report yesterday on the census, we have another good article by Adam Goodheart, "The Census of Doom," Disunion--New York Times, April 1, 2011.   Lots of information on the eve of the Civil War. 

"Worried Southerners could not fail to notice that the areas of the greatest population boom were all in the North.  Both Wisconsin and Minnesota were free states.  Both went heavily for Lincoln in the 1860 election.  Both were populated largely by immigrants with roots in Germany and Scandinavia and pioneers with roots in New England and New York -- groups well known for their strong antipathy to slavery.  And both, as it happened, would soon send tens of thousands of their inhabitants to fight in the Union Army.

Southern analysts looked at the data...were quick to note the changing demographics were about to usher in a political cataclysm in Washington...legislative reapportionment based on the new Census figures were about to set off a tectonic shift.

...and so, on the even of the war's first shots, Southern slaveholders felt that they were escaping one of the worst fates that a human being might suffer:  that of becoming a politically oppressed minority."


For the news of the day, we go to the Civil War Daily Gazette, "The Fog Over Sumter, April 2, 1861.  We read about the orders that General Beauregard receives from the Confederate War Office. 


And an informative diary to read today:  The American Civil War, "The Diary of Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut," April 2, 1861.

 "On April 2, 1861, Mary Chesnut decided to sit out a trip her husband was taking to look at the island forts in Charleston Harbor.  Instead, she stayed in and held an impromptu and belated celebration of her thirty-eighth birthday...in the course of the day she encounters John L. Manning, Louis T. Wigfall and his wife Charlotte, and nearly runs into General P.G.T. Beauregard. 

Mary Chesnut paints a poignant portrait of ante-bellum Charleston.  But even as war looms she notes that no one in her immediate circle wants to talk about it.  They dine on grouse, venison, and salmon blissfully unaware of what is about to happen."