A Decisive Victory – The BVA at Fort Sumter April 1861

Secession Fever

In the fall of 1860, our second great-grandfather Julius Bythewood Bell (1834-1897) was a 25 year-old clerk, the youngest child of John Bell (1792-1864) and Margaret Hingston Bythewood Bell (1810-?). The elder Bells had a modest sea island cotton plantation on St. Helena Island in the old Beaufort Judicial District of South Carolina. Though the family would not have been counted among the wealthy and influential planter class, the advantageous marriages of Julius’ two older brothers and the summer townhouse Julius’ mother and aunts inherited in Beaufort gave the Bells entrée into the margins of elite Beaufort society. Julius was a Corporal in the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery (BVA), a militia unit that traced its roots to before the Revolutionary War. Secession fever had been bubbling up for some years, led nationally by the Bell’s elite planter neighbors. Following the secession of South Carolina in December 1860, the BVA trained and recruited with greater haste and purpose.

J.B. Bell and the BVA at Fort Sumter

In January 1861, six additional southern states seceded, and a Confederate States government was installed the following month. Meanwhile, Federal officials in Charleston, fifty miles up the Atlantic coast, recognized the quickly shifting political winds. They were forced to abandon the customs house, post office, and federal arsenal. The small U.S. army garrison (some of whom would later swap their Union blues for Rebel gray) decided to concentrate their forces at Fort Sumter, a man-made island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. Commanding the garrison was Major Robert Anderson of Kentucky, a career soldier. In January, an attempt to resupply the garrison by sea was repelled by a company of cadets from the Citadel Military Academy in Charleston. In March A delightful early spring arrived in the South Carolina Lowcountry as diplomatic efforts proceeded. Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated and Confederate leadership sent Pierre G.T. Beauregard to take command of the various South Carolina militias. Maj. Anderson was Gen. Beauregard’s former artillery instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where Gen Beauregard had recently resigned as Commandant.

“Diplomacy has failed. The sword must now preserve our independence.” – Confederate States Commissioner Martin J. Crawford, April 10, 1861

Artillery companies from throughout the state, including and especially from the Beaufort District, continued to arrive and make preparations at all of the islands that surrounded Fort Sumter. According to a history of Fort Sumter, “Anderson complained of Confederate mortar batteries firing too close to the fort as they practiced and of being unable to reply to such an ‘insult,’ which did not constitute and actual assault.”² The actual assault wold not be long in coming. Charleston Harbor lay cloaked in the darkness of a new moon in the early morning chill of April 12, 1861. 80 Federal officers and men accompanied by about 40 laborers slept hunkered down behind the fifty-five foot high by five foot thick walls of Fort Sumter while some 6,000 South Carolina troops made ready on all sides. At 4:30 AM a single mortar was launched against the isolated garrison and signaled the assault, which continued through the daylight hours until the following afternoon. Hundreds of Charleston civilians gathered on their rooftops to view the fireworks, cheer their men, and witness the decisive Confederate victory that began the U.S. Civil War.

“When the war began in Charleston Harbor,” wrote historian Lawrence Rowland, “Beaufort’s young men were prominent and active. Captain George B. Cuthbert was the commander of the Palmetto Guard and the Iron Battery on Cummings Point. He offered to Edmund Ruffin of Virginia the honor of firing the first and fateful shot. Lieutenant Alfred Rhett and Major John G. Barnwell were at Fort Moultrie. Lieutenant Edward H. Barnwell was on James Island, and Captain Stephen Elliott, commander of the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery, was on Cummings Point.”¹ As Capt. Elliott was J.B. Bell’s immediate commander, it stands to reason that Julius Bell and many of his comrades were also there, manning the BVA guns at Cummings Point on Morris Island, the closest artillery battery to the besieged Union garrison at Fort Sumter. Capt. Elliott would go on to become a celebrated Confederate infantry general. Interestingly, though some 620,000 men would die during the four-year conflict, the assault of Fort Sumter resulted in zero combat mortalities. Following the surrender, Maj. Anderson and his men boarded a steamer for the north.

“As soon as Anderson’s men filed out of the fort, South Carolina Volunteers filed in. Artillery companies from Cummings Point and Sullivan’s Island garrisoned Fort Sumter during its first night under Confederate Ownership, spending much of the evening helping two Charleston fire companies douse the persistent flames. “Fort Sumter is a terrible wreck,” wrote a young South Carolina lieutenant, unaware how much more pounding the bastion was in for. The guns of Fort Sumter remained silent for nearly two years.”²

In addition to being very likely that our ancestor witnessed and participated in the start of the Civil War that April morning in 1861, it is entirely possible that he was among the Confederate troops that garrisoned the fort that evening. It is also nearly certain that he served in defense of Charleston two years later, and documented that he was among those surrendered when hostilities finally ceased in April 1865.  But those are stories for another day.

Another Decisive Victory

Four more states had joined the Confederacy by early July, when the rebels won a second decisive victory at Manassas, Virginia. Generals Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston (and Thomas Jackson, who there earned the sobriquet “Stonewall”) routed the Union Army, chasing soldiers and hundreds of day-tripping civilians expecting to witness a quick Union victory back toward the Federal capital. The Union and the fledgling presidency of Abraham Lincoln was at a nadir, while the Confederacy and the citizens of the Beaufort District began to hope for a hasty diplomatic end to hostilities, and a return to their accustomed way of life.

Adapted from A String of Bells: Stories of a Southern Family © 2020 by Nick J. Guevara, Jr.

¹The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina Volume 1, 1514-1861 by L. Rowland, A. Moore, and G. Rogers ©1996 Univ. of South Car. Press pg 444

²The Fight for Fort Sumter text by William Marvel ©2017 Eastern National, National Park Civil War Series pgs 24,35

Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license