‘Reduce the fort’

THE ORDER to “reduce the fort” arrived at the “iron-clad” battery on Cummings Point well past midnight, the morning of April 12. There could be no delay. When offered the “honor” of firing first, Roger Pryor, a Virginian, refused.

“He shook his head, his long hair swaying. ‘I could not fire the first gun of the war,’ he said, his voice … husky with emotion … Another Virginian could and would – white-haired Edmund Ruffin, a farm-paper editor and old-line secessionist, sixty-seven years of age. At 4.30 he pulled a lanyard; the first shot of the war drew a red parabola against the sky and burst with a glare, outlining the dark pentagon of Fort Sumter. Friday dawned crimson on the water as the siege got under way …” (Shelby Foote)

And so the American Civil War began in 1861, 150 years ago this day.

A footnote: In June 1865, two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army at Appomattox Court House after four bloody years of war, Ruffin (pictured above) put a rifle muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger.