1861: A Storm Over Sumter

1861: Storm Over Sumter

A  Charleston Play in One Act

Cast

Mary Chesnut                 Robert Barnwell

Charlotte Wigfall            Abraham Lincoln (voice)

Virginia Kirkland            Louis Wigfall

James Petigru                  Robert Anderson

James Chesnut                 Lawrence

[All scenes take place in the drawing room of the apartment of James and Mary Chesnut, at a boarding house in Charleston, South Carolina, on East Bay Street, with a large piazza looking onto Charleston Harbor and Fort Sumter.]

Scene 1

Seated at a large table, set for tea, on the piazza center stage, Mary Chesnut,38, dark hair bobbed to just below her ears, handsome rather than beautiful, in brightly colored dress and scarf, and Charlotte Wigfall, about the same age, in somber clothes.

 Lawrence, large black servant, grey hair, opens door stage right.

Lawrence:  Miz Chesnut, it’s Miz Kirkland, ma’am.

VK (60s, white hair, elaborately dressed, wearing a blue cockade, rushing in, soberly):  Mary, Mary, I’m so glad to see you! I’ve got—oh, I had no idea you had company.  I’m so sorry but I’ve got—

MC (rising):  Pray control yourself, Virginia.  Please make the acquaintance of my great friend Charlotte Wigfall, wife of—well, I’m sure you know Senator Wigfall, you get around so.  Charlotte, this is Virginia Kirkland, one of Charleston’s great ladies.

CW: I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Kirkland, I have heard  so much about you…

VK: Oh you must discount all of that, you know how people are these days.  And I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m sure you too will want  to see what I’ve brought.  Here it is—it’s the Secession Ordinance that they passed last night! Passed unanimously.  Oh, Lord, what is to become of us!

MC:  Pray do sit down Virginia, you look so white.  Here, dear one. (She helps her sit in a chair at the table.)

VK: I know there was a great fuss last night, I heard it, the guns and the cheering and the bonfires, the marching up and down, but I just must say, Mary, that this may be a very dangerous step for our gallant little state to take. May god help us, is what I say—and in the words of the Bible, as our days are long, so shall our strength be.

MC:  I think we share your trepidation, Virginia, and I too wondered that there was such a tumult over on King and down at the Battery last  night–did  no one  realize that the people in Washington are not just going to sit idly by and let us march off into our own happy republic?

And yet, dear ones, I do feel that  we mean business this time, because of that convocation of the notables, that convention. In it were all our wisest and best, I do believe. They really have tried to send the ablest men, good men and true. South Carolina was never more splendidly represented.

And just between you and me, leaving patriotism and politics and all that  aside, it makes society delightful. One need not regret having left Washington, there’s such a coming and going of attractive men—and women—in Charleston just now.   Anyway, I hear that the Radical Republicans in Washington these days are all gray, angry people and not much in the way of social animals, and they tell me that the vulgarity of the Lincolns is beyond credence, rough specimens of the frontier.

VK: Oh, I don’t mind all the great families descending on us here in Charleston, we can certainly handle them and show them how the leading city of the South provides a hospitable time for them. But let me read you what the document says, and see if you don’t think there’s something…well, ominous I guess…in its import.

CW: Oh yes, Mrs. Kirkland, pray do.

VK: It’s really very short: “An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other states united with her under the compact of the Constitution of the United States: We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the twenty-third day of May in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eighty eight, whereby the Constitution of the United State of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendment of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of ‘The United States of America,’ is hereby dissolved.

“Done at Charleston on the twentieth day of December in the year of our Lord eighteen  hundred and sixty. “  And then there are the signatures, all 169 of the delegates, God help them all.

And that’s it, that’s the whole thing.  I understand they’re at work writing up another document that will explain our reasons and all that, but this is the thing that cuts the ties and sends us off on our own now, beating straight against the wind.

MC:  Well, there’s no beating around the bush is there, no shillying and shallying about it.  At least—

Lawrence:  I’m sorry, missus, but Mr. Petigru wishes to see you. He’ded hoped to see the marster, but I told him  he warn’t in jus’ now.

MC:  That’s fine, thank you, Lawrence, please show him in.

(James Petigru,71, old but still vigorous,  walks briskly in.)

JP:  Ah, Mary, delighted to find you home, so many people are dashing around town today, God only knows what for.  And Mrs. Kirkland, what a delight, and of course you, too, Charlotte.  What a charming and fortuitous sight, to find three of Charleston’s most beautiful belles all together.  I am honored.

MC: Oh, James! Please take a seat.

JP:  Yes, truly honored.  And I must say it makes a welcome change from  the sorry sights I’ve seen around me these last two days.  You’d hardly believe how they’re carrying on, as though they had all of them struck gold or found the fountain of youth just down the way. Little men, crowing on their own dunghill! When what they’ve done is torn themselves loose from the greatest republican state in all the world, a beacon to mankind these past seventy years, as though there was any way that they could survive all on their own–as though a population of, what is it?, three-hundred thousand white people could run a nation all by themselves—and with four-hundred thousand slaves outnumbering them to do their bidding.  What nonsense!  I tell you gentle ladies, South Carolina is too small to be a republic—and too big to be an insane asylum! (They laugh.) Though that’s what they’re acting like.

MC: James, I beg of you, don’t carry on so.  Yes, it may well fail, but not because it’s too small—were not Athens, and Genoa and Venice and those other Italian states republics? And weren’t they small? And yes, sir, I’m afraid the Union may raise an army and try to take it back. But South Carolina, sir, is a repository of great skill and great wealth, not to mention great resilience and courage, and I think you may be surprised how well it will fare—especially if the other slave states come along with us and we defend our heritage and culture together.

VK:  I must say, Mr. Petigru, that I share your concern for the future of our state.  I haven’t slept a wink all night worrying about what this secession will take us all into.

JP: Well, madam, you are quite right to be worrying, for I see no chance that we can avoid a war over all this. I went out to Fort Moultrie today, on Sullivan’s, to say goodbye to the gallant remnant of our Union army there, and found that they seemed determined to stay, secession or no secession, especially the junior officers. Though I know Major Anderson in command there was terribly torn—he was born in Kentucky, you know, and married a lady from Georgia whose family once had slaves.  He was downright morose, and I took his hand and cursed the folly and madness of these times.  Folly and madness, and I regret to say it’s all around us! (Pause…no one speaks.)

(Rises)Forgive me, ladies. I regret that I must go find James and do what I can to stop it–and I would ask that you dear ones, who share my trepidation, do what you can to stop it, too.  For it would be a tragedy beyond compare should we instigate a movement throughout the South to dissolve this precious Union and  provoke that Union to arms, as surely it would, with the consequence, I must say to you ladies, of blood and slaughter beyond imagining.

I would ask you, as I would ask all Carolinians, to remember it was our own John Calhoun only a few years ago who said, “To the Union, next to our liberty most dear.”  Nothing has changed since then.

Good day to you all.

( Dark.)

Scene 2.

(Morning. Mary Chesnut is breakfasting at a small table with two chairs, stage right.  James Chesnut, 45, handsome with a full black van Dyke, cool, reserved, lawyer-like, enters stage left, carrying a newspaper.)

JC: Good morning, my dear. I’m afraid I’m the bearer of some…well, some terrible news.  It seems that our Robert Anderson has flown the Moultrie coop in the dark of night, sailing halfway ‘cross the harbor, eluding our boats–while our Governor Pickens slept serenely—and has chosen to ensconce himself at Fort Sumter instead. (He points out the window toward the fort, with a flag  just visible.)

MC (rising):  Oh, James, that’s terrible! Right after Christmas!

JC: Yes, I’m afraid it could lead to…to  war.  If it means that the Yankees have no intention of ceding to us the national property on our soil, I can see no other course of action.  I understand that state after state down here is taking over the Union forts and fortresses, everywhere without a shot, and even before they’ve officially seceded—though most of them will do so, there’s not a doubt about that.

Let me read to you what the Courier  says this morning: “Major Robert Anderson has achieved the unenviable distinction of opening civil war between American citizens by a gross breach of faith.”  I don’t know how much official faith was established between us and Washington—you know that the delegation we’ve sent up there to negotiate can get no hearing from the Buchanan people—but still it is a gross and provocative action, and I fear it may indeed be the Yankees’ first act of war, taking over a fort that legitimately belongs to us, to which we must inevitably respond….

When, I don’t know.  But respond we must.

MC: Oh, James, Anderson has certainly opened the ball! My lord, civil war.

JC: I know that’s what the paper said, “civil war,”  Mary. But to be precise, and we lawyers like to be precise, it is not a civil war.  Civil wars are wars where one side desires to take over the capital and power of another side—like the English civil war, the Roundheads and the Cavaliers, you remember, or the recent Greek civil war, or even the wars of 1848. But that’s not what a war now would be—it would be a war of secession.

Just like the Revolutionary War of our fathers, if you please:  the colonists didn’t want to take over  London, or Westminster, they just wanted to be left alone, to go their own way, so they declared their independence and seceded from Great Britain  Well, Mary, it’s the same thing today—we don’t want to take over that cesspool in Washington, or in fact anything in the Union, we just want to be left alone to go our own way. Let’s call it a war of secession, then. (He thinks a moment.)  Or a war of the Yankees trying to stop us from doing what our Founding Fathers did!

(Dark.)

Scene 3

(Mary Chesnut, late afternoon, alone at her desk,  stage left, writing, pausing, writing.)

MC (as if to herself):  I think that says it best, though I deeply wish it didn’t: “Those who want a row are in high glee.  Those who dread it are in gloom.”  (She puts her pen down, closes her diary.) You know (musing to herself), most of us feel in the doleful dumps, but we are as madly gay and jolly as sailors who break into the strong-room as the ship is going down. What a dear, delightful place is Charleston!

Lawrence, stage right:  Mr. Barnwell, Miz Chesnut, ma’am.

(Robert Barnwell is a man of about 60, handsome with a mop of wavy hair, glasses and the air of a scholar. He meets Mary halfway across the room and they embrace, warmly.. There is a subtle air of  flirtation between them.)

MC: Oh, Robert, how wonderful to see you.  I haven’t laid eyes on you in positive weeks, dear man.  Not since Montgomery and those awful days of the Convention.

RB:  Not so awful, Mary.  It took a few months, true enough, and it’s not quite over, but we did write ourselves a grand new constitution that I pray will guide the Confederacy for a good long time to come.

MC: Oh, pshaw, Robert! You didn’t do anything but take the old U.S. Constitution and added somethin’ about slavery, and it took you weeks to do it, everybody speaking for hours—to their own satisfaction!

RB: Now, Mary, I don’t want to have a constitutional debate here in your delightful home, I just came to talk with the one person in Charleston who knows what all the others are thinking and feeling.  But inasmuch as you  have touched upon it, I’m obliged to say we did improve that constitution quite a good deal—in fact we made it into the kind of constitution Jefferson would have written if he could have:  we ordered no tariffs on foreign shipping, no government money for roads and canals and such, and we did add that bit about “We the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character”—I memorized it Mary, but after all I did write it–and that means a lot.  Fact is, if the original constitution had had that kind of language in it—it  was the Founders’ original intent, after all—we  wouldn’t be having all this fuss around us today.

MC: That’s enough, Robert, come do sit down, I think it’s warm enough out here, though it has  been a rather chilly March. Here, have a bit of sherry (pours), it will soothe you.  And I do so want you to stay for supper–please say you will, dear man. (They sit at the piazza table.)

RB:  I certainly will, my dear, and be gladdened to do so.  Do you have Lilly down here cooking, or is she still up in Camden?

MC:  Oh, she’s with me here—not too overjoyed about it, you know how she prefers the plantation to all these goings on in the big city–but I’m afraid, between you and me, that I find that Camden, as Tennyson puts it, “festers in provincial sloth.”  Yes, she’s here, but it won’t be one of her grand meals, just a small supper, just the two of us, I believe.  James is working for General Beauregard, you know, and spends a great deal of time at the Confederate headquarters. I hardly get to see him, most days.

RB: I’m glad it’s just the two of us, Mary, it might not be a meal of great hilarity.  I’ve just learned from Beauregard that there’s a Yankee warship off the Charleston bar—right off there.  That means they’re going to try to resupply and rearm the Sumter garrison, we fear, and that would be a deliberate act of war. To hold the territory of a foreign power, for that is what we should be to them, against our will, is perhaps the highest insult a government can offer to another.  That would leave us no choice but to try to take the fort by any means we could cobble together.

It’s all so sad, I must say, Mary, so sad.  You know I was part of the delegation that went to Washington last December to try to meet with Buchanan to negotiate a peaceful Union withdrawal from the harbor.

MC: Oh, I do.

RB: We were rebuffed at every turn, despite our most diplomatic efforts,  to avoid a hostile collision which neither of us wanted.  Neither the President nor any of his cabinet would meet with us, even to hear our case, hear the terms of negotiations we were prepared to undertake.  I was quite taken down, I have to say, because, of a truth, I  thought we would have a better chance with Buchanan than with Lincoln.

There are voices up North, Mary, that do want peace, that want to let us secede—quite a few of them, and not all Democrats, either.  Just that month we were up there Horace Greeley, you know the editor of the New York Herald and a Republican, a no-doubt Republican, he said that if the Cotton States, as he put it, want to leave the Union, “we insist on letting them go in peace.” Insist, he said.

MC: Yes, I remember, it was quoted in the Courier and I remember James was quite encouraged by it.

RB: But there weren’t enough of those voices to influence Buchanan, I’m afraid, and we got nowhere on that first attempt. And since you were there in Montgomery, you also know that the Confederate Congress a month ago in February authorized another commission to get to Buchanan in the last days of his office, and if that failed, to get to Lincoln, or Seward, or someone who might give them a friendly hearing.  So far, I have to tell you, nothing.  Nothing!  They won’t even meet with the commissioners, for fear that that would mean they were recognizing the Confederacy as a sovereign state, something that that stubborn Lincoln absolutely refuses to do.  He says, poor fool, that we are still part of the Union, something that is manifestly untrue.

MC:  Yes, I know, Robert, Lincoln is quite a difficult codger. My James says that when he was in the Senate Stephen Douglas told him one day, “Lincoln is a heavy handful–he’s the hardest fellow to handle I have ever encountered yet!”  And  Douglas would surely know.

RB: (Rises, in perturbation.) And matters are getting worse, of course.  Anderson has taken  over Sumter, much easier to defend than Moultrie, he’s strengthened all the fortress walls, and vowed never to surrender.  Lincoln is said to be planning to resupply the fortress—he hasn’t even taken office yet and already he’s apparently on the warpath—and I suppose that  the warship out there is the beginning of that flotilla. And that is something, Mary, I am constrained to say, that as a sovereign state in a sovereign confederacy we just cannot let them do.  We are doing everything for peace, and they—

Lawrence enters, stage right, bearing a tray with supper (pate de froisgras, salad, saltbiscuit glace, and champagne frappe) on it.

Lawrence:  S’cuse me, Miz Chesnut, Lilly said you’d be expectin’ a l’il supper. ( He prepopares to set it on the small table stage right, where the Chesnuts had breakfast.  MC and RB go in.)

MC: Quite right, Lawrence, we thank you for it.  (She clears the table and Lawrence takes plates off the tray and sets them there.)  You are very good and faithful in these doleful times, Lawrence, and I want you to know we appreciate it.

Lawrence: Yes ma’am, yes ma’am, much obliged.  (Exit.)

MC: Come, Robert, a small repast.  We must keep up our strength to get through this time of troubles.

RB:  Thank you, dear heart. (They sit.)

MC: You know, I simply do not understand why there’s all this… this strife and hostility between us. Isn’t it perfectly obvious that we are really two different countries, North and South, and that we separated from the North because of incompatibility of…temper?  It is not a matter of tariffs, or slavery, or fugitive laws, or all that—it’s a matter of one country of community and agriculture and tradition and deep Christian beliefs, and another of cities and industries and modernity and virtual godlessness.  We are not like the Yankees, and they not like us—and they want to keep us part of the Union only because we supply them with most of the revenue they squander.

RB: Which indeed they readily, even avidly, admit, Mary.

MC:  Well, in truth we want the divorce because, underneath everything else, and I’m aggrieved to say it, we have hated each other so.  No, Robert let us be frank about it.  Hated each other from the very start, I think, and only hoped to make a union of it so as to keep the peace. Well, that time is over. A marriage cannot long endure with one spouse mistreating the other—why can’t we both go our ways, as in all divorces, and let the past be over?  If only we could separate, peaceably, une separation agreable as the French say—and as the French do, I may add—and not have a horrid fight for divorce.

RB (raising glass):  To peace then, to a peaceful divorce!

MC (raising glass): To peace!

(Stage goes gray.  The scene is held, motionless, during this voiceover of Lincoln’s Inaugural. A soft spot stage left, above the desk, shines on a silhouette of a bearded man unquestionably Lincoln in profile, mouthing the words.)

A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

My fellow citizens, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

Scene 4

(Mary and James Chesnut at breakfast, stage right.)

JC:  I’m just reading here a dispatch from New York, March 25. It’s about the Northern reaction to our Constitutional Convention that ended  a couple of weeks ago. I suppose it’s not surprising that it seems mostly to be about our free-trade policy to encourage European shipping. Listen to this from the Philadelphia Press: “With no protective tariff, European goods will underprice Northern goods in Southern markets.  This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. We must blockade Southern ports!”

And this, from a Boston paper: “The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed of the idea that New York, Boston and Philadelphia may be shorn of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade. The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”

That sounds a great deal as if they all want an invasion of our ports—absolutely outrageous!

MC: (Standing, pouring from the teapot.) Aren’t they at all aggravated about keeping the Union and “Union perpetual” and all that sundry sort of stuff that Lincoln talked about in that Inaugural?

JC: Apparently not, my dear, not the majority, at any rate.  Nor do they say anything about slavery, which seems to be an issue only to the radical abolitionists—I suppose because Lincoln himself in that same speech said it was all acceptable to him and he had no intention of acting against it. (They hold their pose while the stage goes gray. Lincoln voiceover.)

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that–I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

MC: Well, James, I have to say that I think that trade issue alone provides a goodly reason for them to invade us, if they think their whole economy and trade will be undercut.  That’s where the power is, as well you now, up North—in the merchants and the bankers and the moneyed interests. Not like us here–though our ports are prosperous enough, we don’t have the commercial classes calling the tunes we dance to.

JC:  I dare say you’re right, Mary, and it is not a comfort.  The tariff motive alone may be enough for them to invade our ports—and keep Fort Sumter operating as the collector. (They hold pose. Stage goes gray.)

Lincoln voiceover: If I abandon the custom house on Fort Sumter, sir, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once!

(Dark.)

Scene 5

(Late afternoon, after supper. Mary Chesnut on the piazza with Mr. and Mrs. Wigfall, deep in discussion. Louis Wigfall is 45 years old, large man, full dark beard, “fire-eater,” heavy drinker; he is standing with a glass of whiskey in his hand.)

LW:  But dash it all, Mary, there can be no peace.  The Yankees are sending an all-out fleet down here to resupply the fort, I understand from Beauregard six warships—six!—and no one doubts now that despite our best efforts Lincoln intends war. We’ve got a telegraph from our commissioners in Washington saying flat out that, how did they put it?, “war policy prevails.” Well, let them try it and we’ll blast them out of the water, I say, just you wait and see.  I’ve been with Beauregard, I know how we’re loading our cannon all around the harbor. Let them bring it on–we are in the saddle now and let Washington beware!

CW: Oh, Louis, don’t talk that way. (Taking his arm in a wifely way.  Then, to Mary) He’s always been an impetuous man, dear, he’s something of a stormy petrel, you know, and this Sumter thing has got him quite stirred up.

MC (soberly): There stands Sumter—en evidence–and thereby hangs peace or war….Why did that green goose Anderson go into Sumter, after all,  instead of staying at Moultrie where he belonged? (That’s where his father served, did you know?, in the Revolution.) That’s when everything went wrong. And now James tells me they’ve intercepted a letter from him to the War Department, urging them in Washington to let him surrender.  He paints a pretty picture of the horrors that are likely to ensue if they won’t…. He ought to have thought of that before he put his head in the hole.

LW: Now, don’t fret so, little lady. The Yankees invade us here, Virginia and the border states will join the Confederacy and we’ll have a mighty force. You’ll see, it’ll take only two battles and we’ll close this war and our independence will be acknowledged. (Speechifying a bit.) “There is a tide  in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune”—and we are at that flood now, mark my words.  Our men are devoted dare-devils with dash and courage, and something to fight for–unlike the Yankees who have no taste for war at all.  We’re fighting for our freedom, our independence, Mary, just as our forefathers did, and as their cause was just, so too is ours, as theirs was noble so too ours. We are emboldened men, confident and determined—just listen to them out there—who are fighting for our new country, our new constitution, our new cause, with a thriving and prosperous, a vibrant and dynamic, new society in view.  It is a glorious cause, Mary, as I know you understand, and we will see it through to victory!

These are exciting days, Mary, I tell you. In a few days, war. War? Bring it on, I say!

CW: It may be as you say, Louis, please don’t carry on so.  But not long ago I was speaking with Mr. Harris, down from Spartanburg, and he said it was going to be a long civil, bloody war, brother against brother and none wishing to give in, and—this is how he put it—like all civil wars soaking the ground with beloved blood, turning the hillsides barren, and nobody ever winning—and perhaps an insurrection among the slaves as well. “The Lord save us,” he said to me in grave tones, “from such a horrid fate.”

(Stage goes gray. Lincoln voiceover as Mary and the Wigfalls hold still.)  Lieutenant Fox, I direct you to go ahead with the orders I have previously sent you to send the fleet to Charleston harbor and resupply the fort there.  If you meet resistance, reinforce the garrison with additional soldiers.  Notify Anderson to expect the fleet on April 12.

(Lights up. Robert Barnwell rushes in from stage right.)

RB: Oh, Mary, forgive me, forgive this intrusion, and pray forgive me, dear Mrs. Wigfall.  But they are making such a commotion down at  the Mills House, much hither and froing, and they insist that Senator Wigfall come and give one of his stem-winders down there. Do forgive me.

MC:  Of course, Robert, of course—he’s already started one right here.  I can see it’s all in a good cause.  Something to get the crowd riled up so they can go on their revelries through the night, keep us all awake. They’d might better get a good night sleep to prepare for what’s ahead, but of course—

LW: Now, now, Mary, I must go to my people.  We need to be fired up for our fate, now, and I love nothing more than standing side-by-side with the gallant men of South Carolina!

RB: You won’t be standing much side-by-side, Louis, you’ll be up there on the piazza expounding to them all, but never mind, come on, they are a fiery crowd.  Good night, ladies, good, good night!

(The two men exit stage right. MC and CW, carrying wine glasses, go sit at the small table stage right. Twilight.)

CW:  Such a flamboyant man! I don’t know how I put up with him.  You know, it seems to me, dear, that we are mismatched.  I would be better paired with your cool, quiet, self-possessed husband, and my stormy petrel is a far closer match to you, a male reflection of your energy and vigor.

MC: Thank you, no, Charlotte, I could not keep up with Louis, and I know we would be fighting all the time.  My pardon, but I feel I am better suited to James, at least I know he won’t go flying off the handle in a duel or somesuch the way your Louis does.

(Suddenly the stage goes gray and the spotlight upper stage right shines on a dock leading from a door in the granite wall of Fort Sumter, with a rowboat tied up in front of it, a flag of truce in the bow.  Captain James Chesnut, dressed with red sash and sword on a gray uniform, is on the dock in deep conversation with a slight, medium-sized man of middle age, dressed in Union blue with a major’s insignia.

JC: Well, Major Anderson, I’m sorry you cannot understand our position.

RA:  It’s not that I don’t understand it, Captain, it’s rather that I cannot acquiesce to your demands without surrender—and both my sense of honor, sir, and my obligations to my government prevent surrender. (Pause.)  I am in a difficult position, as surely you know. I have seen the horrors of war, sir, I have seen the gruesome massacre of Indians, the horrors of battle at Montzuma.  My heart is sick… but I am under orders to hold the fort….

Let me ask a straightforward question, Captain.  Will General Beauregard open his batteries without notice to me?

JC (bluntly): I think I can say that he will give you time to evacuate in the next few days, and we will abstain from firing upon you if you do.  If not, he will reduce the fort as in his judgment he decides to be most practicable. Good day, sir.

They shake hands and Chesnut returns to his rowboat, somber. As the boat slips away Anderson quietly stands looking, then with some sharpness:

Our Southern brethren have done wrong.  They have rebelled—and they must be punished!

(Out.)

(Lights up.)

CW: A duel? Oh, Mary, Louis hasn’t fought a duel since we were married twenty years ago.  He does argue, I know, that the code of the manly duel is “good for the improvement of both the morals and the manners of a community,” or suchlike, but honestly he gave that up long, long ago.

MC: Well I don’t know about dueling, but it certainly looks as though he will be doing some real fighting in the not-too-distant future—indeed, I may suppose that that’s why I believe he may be the only truly happy man I see these days…. I must say Charlotte, it looks as if the time is nigh.  Let us reflect upon this war—James says not to call it a civil war, but I really don’t know what else to call it.  Whatever it is, I must say my heart is beating  so painfully now.

CW: Oh, Mary, it all looks so troublesome.  Think of it, the Yankees in the front and the negroes in the rear—and you’d better believe that there will be some kind of servile insurrection, I see no other possible course.

(Enter James Chesnut, in uniform but without the sword, stage left.)

JC:  Oh, Mary, so glad I caught you still up. And good evening, Charlotte, I hope I’m not interrupting anything serious.

MC: Well, it certainly was serious, dear—we’ve been solacing ourselves with dwelling on the horrors of the upcoming war—(She rises to greet him with a hug) but I think we’ve had enough of that.  Tell us about your trip to the fort.

JC: Just so.  Beauregard, on orders from Jefferson Davis himself– President Davis, I should say–sent  me and Captain Lee out to talk to Anderson and give him an ultimatum:  leave the fort or we will reduce it.  The general sincerely does not wish to bombard the fort and he implored me to make the case as strongly as I could that should Anderson man his boats and sail out to the Yankee fleet offshore, we will do nothing to harm him or his men….

You know, dear ladies, that Robert Anderson is a deeply troubled man.  He was born in Kentucky and is in his heart a Southerner, and yet he has served in the Union army all his life and devoted himself in two wars to its various causes.  He taught at West Point, and here is an irony of such dimensions that it causes me pain to think of it: he was a professor of artillery and had written a book on that subject—and he taught General Beauregard!  The very man who is now preparing to use artillery to bring down the professor these many years later.

CW: My, how odd! What tricks fate plays upon us.

JC: I am certain that Anderson does not want war.   And yet it is preternaturally clear that Lincoln does, and he does not want Anderson to abandon the fort.  He wants Anderson to wait until the Union fleet sails into the harbor to try to resupply them and provoke us into firing upon it, so that the Confederacy will be seen in the eyes of the world to have fired the first shot! A devious, diabolical scheme indeed.  And Anderson knows it, knows that it will start a war, and he knows that he and his men will be in mortal danger, and yet he cannot abandon the fort: his orders are clear and to disobey them for the sake of peace and the safety of his garrison would mean treason, something he as an officer and gentlemen simply cannot do.

(Long pause.)   He asked me for time to consult with his aides, though frankly they struck me as more hotheaded than he.  One of them, a Major Doubleday, is all for them opening fire on Charleston, would you believe.  So I don’t know, but I am to return there later tonight to give Anderson one more chance.

We’ve done so much to arrive at peace, and at every turn we are scorned and rebuffed.  But it is only honorable to give it one more try. So good night, fair ladies, and wish me well.  Duty calls. (He exits.)

MC: You know, Charlotte, if there be no war, how triumphant my James will be. He is the only man, the only man I know, who has persisted from the first—and now to the very last!—that this would be a peaceful revolution. Heaven grant that it may be so.

(Stage goes grey.. Spotlight on Fort Sumter, stage right. Anderson is coming out of the fort door, followed by Captain Lee and then Chesnut. They are audible.)

RA: Thank you for coming, gentlemen, but as you can see there is no change.  We must obey orders, we must stay.  And you, you too must obey orders…and I will await the first shot.

JC:  I must say I regret this, Major. We will open fire in one hour. Godspeed.

RA (taking a hand of first Lee and then Chesnut, caressing their sleeves, with great emphasis): Gentlemen…if we never meet in this world again… God grant that we may meet in the next!

(Dark.)

Scene 6

(Continual roar of cannon, with occasional red flashes of bombs in air. Mary Chesnut, Charlotte Wigfall on piazza, watching Sumter.  They retire to the parlour, closing the French doors for some quiet. They take tea and toast at the small table stage right.)

MC:  Oh, my lord, Charlotte, this noise just goes on and on.  It started after 4 last night and they kept it up all night and most of this morning. The fort seems to be on fire, yet they keep on shooting back at us—I think to little purpose.  I hope it is over soon.

CW: I’m sure it will be.

MC: The women who were here earlier, when we were watching the shelling from the piazza most of the night, kept on saying, “God is on our side.”  I don’t know—why should that be so?

CW:   Oh, Mary, of course He hates the Yankees, that’s what we are told. You’ll think that speaks well of Him, I do not doubt.

MC: Well, I’m not so sure, but I will pray to Him, nonetheless, that this awful din soon ceases. (Pause) I must say, Charlotte, I’m a little surprised at the negro servants. Not by one word or look can we detect any change in their demeanor.  Lawrence sits outside the door, sleepy indeed but respectful, and somehow profoundly indifferent to it all. And the rest of them as well. You could not tell that they even heard the awful roar going on outside in the bay, though it’s gone on day and night. They make no sign.  I wonder…Are they stolidly stupid? I should doubt it.  Or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding their time?

CW: Oh, I should think the latter—they are waiting.

MC:  You know, Charlotte, I do believe that let the war end either way, they will be free. It seems we will have to free them before we get out of this mess.

CW:  I’m not so sure of that, indeed I’m not so sure they would want that.  They are well taken care of now, at least all that I know, without poverty or destitution, fed tolerably well—and the house servants eat the same food we do—and taken care of in sickness and old age, some of them taught special trades and the women trained in the domestic arts.  They all speak English, in their fashion, and some of them are even taught to read and write, and they all are provided with a rich spiritual life, which they relish in their own way.  I mean, what would they do if they were free? Wouldn’t they find themselves mostly driftless and destitute, without professions or means?  I don’t know, but it seems to me that this life is what they know, and they are accustomed to it.

MC: Perhaps you are right, Charlotte, but I wonder if it be a sin to think slavery a curse to any land….  And I don’t see how we will keep them on our side through the dreadful months ahead unless we grant them emancipation, and—

Lawrence (wearily): S’cuse me, Miz Chesnut, it’s Marse Barnwell.

RB (dressed in a uniform, clearly hand-made, with red sash and sword): Ladies, forgive the intrusion. (Standing at attention, with a salute.) Colonel Barnwell, at your service!

MC: You are most welcome, sir. And looking very smart, if you please.

RB: Thank you, madam. I just got off duty down at the Battery and I felt I had to tell someone about the experience.  I have been under fire for the better part of a day, and I must say I didn’t mind it in the least.  It’s one of those things where a fellow never knows how he will come out, how well he will do, until he has been tried.  So now I know I am a worthy descendant of my father, an officer in the Revolution, and a gallant and heroic man.  I feel I can stand with him, man to man.

(Cannonfire ceases.)

Wait—what’s that? (They listen to the sudden silence.) I must see. (He takes a small binoculars from his belt and goes out to the piazza, leaving the French doors open.) Yes, by God, ladies, the battle’s over—and there’s a white flag, I would say, flying over Sumter.  (The two women join him looking toward the fort.)

We have won…we have won!

CW: Oh thank the good and merciful Lord! (She crosses herself, and Mary does likewise.)

JC (enters from stage left, in uniform without sword, quickly to the piazza, calm and placid, embraces Mary): Yes, the fort has surrendered!  And we did it without casualties, and not a battery of ours the worse for wear, I am pleased to tell you.  Quite a triumph, I should call it, and Beauregard deserves the credit.  We will take over the fort tomorrow, and today let them bind their wounds and pack their trunks for their retreat to the gunboats off the bar.

RB:  That brings up something that’s been bothering me, sir.  If there were gunboats just offshore, why didn’t they come in and try to relieve Major Anderson?  We would have given them a stormy welcome and done some damage, but they might at least have tried. (Stage grey. All hold poses.)

(Lincoln voiceover): Well, Browning, the plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter—it fell, and thus did more service to us than it otherwise could have.  You and I both anticipated that the cause of the Union would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Sumter, even if it should fail, for the Confederates would certainly be forced to fire the first shot.  Our anticipation has now been justified by the results. (Lights up.)

JC:  It is my guess, Robert, that when they saw our firepower they feared to enter the harbor.  And I suspect for their purposes they didn’t need to risk it.  The war was on, after all, and they could pretend and profess to the world that they hadn’t started it.  Nothing so devious and deceitful as the Yankee mind when determined to exercise its power.

Still, the first battle is over, and we have triumphed. Virginia and North Carolina have joined us, and now I fear it will be a bloody war. I can only hope that it will not go on long and with the help of God the casualties not too great.

MC: Oh, James, we may hope so!

JC:  I don’t believe that this conflict will be long, Mary. (Still standing, addressing all.) We are fighting for our independence, we have a cause, and it is an honorable one, too, one that strikes determination and may I say a little excitement in the Southern heart.  As right is on our side, so may I pray that might will be as well, so that we may end this within weeks.

We have pledged, as our new constitution declares, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.  And that is our fateful cause, my dear friends. May God indeed provide us, daily in the struggle ahead, as the South strikes forward for freedom and as the North has chosen to resist, as brother goes against brother, and as the tremors of war shake this favored land, with His favor and His guidance.  Now when we need it most.

May the present glorious day be remembered by all of us, and sink so deep into our hearts as to show that by virtue and firmness, we not only can be free, but prove to the world by God… that we deserve to be free!

(Dark.)

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