“The genius of Bruce Chadwick’s oral history of the road to Ft. Sumter is that it reveals the emotions, the uncertainties, the fears, the rumors, the excitement, the hopes, the pride, the courage, and the animosities of the men and women involved in . . . the Civil War.”
Historian Bruce Chadwick in The Cannons Roar presents the events leading up to the Confederate bombardment of Ft. Sumter through the eyes, ears, and emotions of some of the statesmen, military leaders, civilians, and newspaper editors on both sides of the then-emerging Civil War. It is an oral history interspersed with Chadwick’s contextual history, and it works.
After a six-page introduction in which Chadwick sets the scene of the Ft. Sumter drama, the oral history begins—most appropriately—with the words of President Abraham Lincoln directed to General Winfield Scott, the U.S. Army Commander, asking Scott how long Sumter’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, and his troops occupying the fort can hold it “without supplies or reinforcements,” whether Scott can resupply or reinforce Anderson in a timely manner, and what Scott would need in order to effectively resupply or reinforce the fort? Scott wrote to the president that he saw no alternative but “surrender.”
