Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, And The Beginning Of The Civil War; Author: Detzer, David; Paperback

Author: Detzer, David
Paperback; Illustrated
Harvest Books
ISBN: 015600741X

Original and deeply human, this tense and surprising story, filled with indecisive bureaucrats, uninformed leaders, hotheaded politicians, and dedicated soldiers, is a clear and intimate portrait of the prolonged drama that unfolded at Fort Sumter and incited the first shot of the Civil War on April 12, 1861. The six-month-long agony that began with Lincoln's election in November sputtered from one crisis to the next, and finally exploded as the soldiers at Sumter neared starvation. With little help from Washington, D.C., Major Robert Anderson, a soldier whose experience had taught him above all that war is the poorest form of policy, almost single-handedly forestalled the beginning of the war until he finally had no choice but to fight. Skillfully re-created from a decade of ext