April 7, 1861 (Sunday)

"...a wet drizzly day."
Diary of a Yankee in the Patent Office

 Hat tip Adam Goodheart, "Courtesy's End," Disunion--New York Times narrative, April 6, 2011.

"On April 7, a startling note came to Anderson from General Beauregard.  The first indication that something had changed was in the salutation.  Just a few hours earlier, Beauregard had sent one of his customarily genteel missives, beginning 'Dear Major' and ending with:  'Let me assure you, Major, that nothing shall be wanting on my part to preserve the friendly relations and impressions which have existed between us for so many years.'

But Beauregard's second note of the day contained no such pleasantries.  It began, curtly, with the single word 'Sir.'   ...After the long months of stasis, something had broken in Charleston.  The time of pleasantries was at an end, and it remained only to see what would come next."
(Read the details of this note at the link above and the implications going forward for the men inside Fort Sumter.)

Hat tip Seven Score and Ten, "Lincoln's Policy on Sumter", April 7, 1861 (an overview.)

"This report gets Lincoln's policy about right -- he plans to provision Sumter, but not to attack southern positions.  If the 'hotheads" in South Carolina attack, then war will be their fault."


An interesting comment in an article by The American Civil War, "Bragg is Not Ready to Attack Fort Pickens," April 7, 1861.

"In Montgomery, Alabama Leroy P. Walker and the rest of the Confederate cabinet were meeting with President Jefferson Davis and working on making the final decision to attack Fort Sumter, yet there seems to have been no plan or preparation for coordinating an attack on Fort Pickens to be carried out at the same time as the planned attack on Sumter.  The South would pay dearly for this oversight."


Hat tip from Daily Observations from the Civil War, an entry from the Diary of William Howard Russell:  "...the United States can never be considered as a free country till a man can speak as freely in Charleston as he can in New York or Boston."

And finally, the week of April 1-7, 1861 related to the Baptists and the American Civil War.

Stories related to Baptists and the Native Americans in the South, differences between slave-holding and non-slave-holding Baptists, equating black slavery with God's purposes in churches of the South, Virginia Baptists divided between Union and secession, life of a Confederate Baptist pastor during the Civil war, life continues uninterrupted for most Baptist congregations of the South, and war talk is thick among Baptists in Charleston.