Optimistic Letter from Fort Sumter: Civil War Propaganda?

In early April of 1861, the nation’s attention was on the Union garrison in Fort Sumter, situated in Charleston Harbor and surrounded by Confederate forts, militia, and 19 batteries of mortars and cannons. South Carolina had been calling for the surrender of the fort ever since it seceded from the Union in December 1860, and demands for the fort increased after the Confederate States of America formed in early February 1861. No hostile action on either side had been taken yet; everyone seemed to realize that the first shot fired would begin a civil war.

The center of all this attention was the brick fort still under construction, strategically located at the harbor mouth. Designed for a garrison of 650 men and 135 guns, Fort Sumter in April 1861 had only half its guns in place and barely 100 men. Charleston was about to cut off supplies to the fort, and it only had provisions to last until April 15. It seemed the men inside the fort would either be bombarded or starved into surrender. The situation was bleak.

Despite this, Northern papers published a curiously optimistic letter in early April, just one week before the attack on Fort Sumter began the Civil War on April 12, 1861. Allegedly written by a sergeant in the fort on behalf of an illiterate soldier, it describes a far better situation than actually existed. This copy of the letter was published by the New York Herald (New York, New York) on the front page of its April 5, 1861, issue:

Reported Letter from Fort Sumter

Buffalo, April 4, 1861

The Commercial Advertiser publishes a letter this afternoon signed “Johnson McNeill,” a private in the army, who enlisted at Buffalo a year ago, and who is now with Major Anderson in Fort Sumter. There is not a doubt as to the genuineness of the letter, which, on account of the soldier’s inability to write well, was written by a sergeant, and brought by a passenger to New York on the last steamer. He says:

“We have enough to eat and drink and sufficient to keep us for four months. Our fuel is scarce, but that is nothing. The rebels think we have been idle, but they nor anyone else will ever know how many men we have in this garrison. We have got sufficient to hold the fort against the whole South in a body. Major Anderson is a true soldier, and so are the other officers, and the men would die for him. I only wish we had a chance to give the rascals hell, and we can do it, too. If we ever go out of this fort, it will not be with the wish of our officers. As to sending us men and supplies, it is all nonsense to talk about it. It cannot be done. We are all right, if old Lincoln will only have the backbone to stand by us.”

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