April 17, 1861
In the weeks and months leading up to the fall of Fort Sumter, the South had been brimming with excitement for the future. Charleston, South Carolina—with newly taken Fort Sumter in its harbor—was leading the South into that future both through its rhetoric and through its actions. Enthusiasm was abound for what had happened and what was to come. Three days after the southerners chased the northerners out of that fort, Charleston was bubbling over with joy. The city—the South, for that matter—was ebullient.
There, in that city, with its “steeples, the domes of public buildings, the rows of massive warehouses and cotton stores on the wharfs, and the bright colours of the houses,” celebrations were already breaking out—and preparations made for war. It was an “exceedingly warm and unpleasant” day, with “hot wind” blowing “fine white sand” into people’s faces and wafting “in minute clouds inside eyelids, nostrils, and clothing.” But conditions could not quell the celebratory atmosphere nor the efforts to prepare for the impending conflict.
Men from around the South were showing up near the city—preparing to train and making their temporary homes in tents. Coming from those tents, pitched on an island near Charleston, there were “sounds of laughter and revelling”—from tents of “all shapes, hues, and sizes, many being disfigured by rude charcoal drawings outside, and inscriptions such as ‘The Live Tigers,’ ‘Rattlesnake’s-hole,’ [and] ‘Yankee Smashers.’” In the tents, a guest could find “hospitality[] and a hearty welcome to all comers.” There were “[c]ases of champagne and claret, French pâtés, and the like,” with some even piled outside the tents “when there was no room for them inside.” There was “[s]uch heat, tobacco-smoke, clamour, toasts, drinking, hand-shaking, vows of friendship!” A sense of brotherhood permeated the city, and the prospect of war only strengthened it.
But that war had not yet fully developed; secession had not yet been secured. Thus, there remained the fashion of secession: “[y]oung ladies sing for it; old ladies pray for it; young men are dying to fight for it; old men are ready to demonstrate it.” The streets resembled “those of Paris in the last revolution” with “[c]rowds of armed men singing and promenading the streets”—with “the flush of victory on the cheek; restaurants full, revelling in bar rooms, club-rooms crowded, orgies and carousings in tavern or private house, in tap-room, from cabaret—down narrow alleys, in the broad highway.” Even the latest action at Fort Sumter was being heralded as one of the great military victories in all of history, despite its relative insignificance: pamphlets about the taking of the fort were already widespread, comparing it to “a bloodless Waterloo.”
Hyperbole aside, no one in the city could doubt that preparations for war were underway—or that the South needed time to complete its preparations. Charleston’s streets “were crowded with lanky lads, clanking spurs, and sabres, with awkward squads marching to and fro, with drummers beating calls, and ruffles, and points of war . . . secession flags waving out of all the windows . . . .”
When night fell, the city’s curfew loomed. Charleston’s “blaze of lights” stood out, and it echoed with “the continual roll of drums, and the noisy music, and the yelling cheers which rose above its streets.” When the “last peal of the curfew bell” came, patrols made their rounds. Mounted “horsemen, heavily armed” swept the streets “and with jingling spurs and sabres disappeared in the dust and darkness.” Some residents—or visitors—ducked into their local club: “a kindly, pleasant, chatty, card-playing, cocktail-consuming place.” There, they could hear talk—as they could anywhere in the city by now—of how the South had shown the Yankees that they could whip them “whenever we meet them—at Washington or down here.” Just then, an observer could hear “more men in uniform arriving every few minutes, and the hall and passages crowded with tall, good-looking Carolinians.”
Last Best Hope of Earth 
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