ck to Charleston,
where Sherman's old friend Beauregard commanded the forces that
encircled Sumter. Sumter, still unfinished, had been designed for
a garrison of six hundred and fifty combatant men. It now contained
exactly sixty-five. It was to have been provisioned for six months.
The actual supplies could not be made to last beyond two weeks.
Both sides knew that Anderson's gallant little garrison must be
starved out by the fifteenth. But the excited Carolinians would
not wait, because they feared that the arrival of reinforcements
might balk them of their easy prey. On the eleventh Beauregard,
acting under orders from the Confederate Government, sent in a
summons to surrender. Anderson refused. At a quarter to one the
next morning the summons was repeated, as pilots had meanwhile
reported a Federal vessel approaching the harbor. Anderson again
refused and again admitted that he would be starved out on the
fifteenth. Thereupon Beauregard's aides declared immediate surrender
the only possible alternative to a bombardment and signed a note
at 3:20 A.M. giving Anderson formal warning that fire would be
opened in an hour.

Fort Sumter stood about half a mile inside the harbor mouth, fully
exposed to the converging fire of four relatively powerful batteries,
three about a mile away, the fourth nearly twice as far. At the northern
side of the harbor mouth stood Fort Moultrie; at the southern stood
the batteries on Cummings Point; and almost due west of Sumter stood
Fort Johnson. Near Moultrie was a four-gun floating battery with an
iron shield. A mile northwest of Moultrie, farther up the harbor,
stood the Mount Pleasant battery, nearly two miles off from Sumter.
At half-past four, in the first faint light of a gray morning,
a sudden spurt of flame shot out from Fort Johnson, the dull roar
of a mortar floated through the misty air, and the big shell--the
first shot of the real war--soared up at a steep angle, its course
distinctly marked by its burning fuse, and then plunged down on
Sumter. It was a capital shot, right on the center of the target,
and was followed by an admirable burst. Then all the converging
batteries opened full; while the whole population of perfervid
Charleston rushed out of doors to throng their beautiful East Battery,
a flagstone marine parade three miles in from Sumter, of which and
of the attacking batteries it had a perfect view.

But Sumter remained as silent as the grave. Anderson decided no