give the command to fire. The night of the 11th was one of great
excitement. It was known for a certainty that on to-morrow the long
looked for battle was to take place. Diplomacy had done its work, now
powder and ball must do what diplomacy had failed to accomplish.
All working details had been called in, tools put aside, the heating
furnaces fired, shells and red-hot solid shot piled in close proximity
to the cannon and mortars. All the troops were under arms during the
night, and a double picket line stretched along the beach, and while
all seemed to be life and animation, a death-like stillness pervaded
the air. There was some apprehension lest the fleet might come in
during the night, land an army on Morris' Island in small boats, and
take the forts by surprise. Men watched with breathless interest the
hands on the dials as they slowly moved around to the hour of four,
the time set to open the fire. At that hour gunners stood with
lanyards in their hands. Men peered through the darkness in the
direction of Sumter, as looking for some invisible object. At half
past four Captain James, from Fort Johnston, pulled his lanyard; the
great mortar belched forth, a bright flash, and the shell went curving
over in a kind of semi-circle, the lit fuse trailing behind, showing
a glimmering light, like the wings of a fire fly, bursting over the
silent old Sumter. This was the signal gun that unchained the great
bull-dogs of war around the whole circle of forts. Scarcely had
the sound of the first gun died away, ere the dull report from Fort
Moultrie came rumbling over the waters, like an echo, and another
shell exploded over the deserted parade ground of the doomed fort.
Scarcely had the fragments of this shell been scattered before General
Stevens jerked the lanyard at the railroad battery, and over the water
gracefully sped the lighted shell, its glimmering fuse lighting its
course as it, too, sped on in its mission of destruction. Along the
water fronts, and from all the forts, now a perfect sheet of flame