Review - "Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson" by Wesley Moody

[Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson by Wesley Moody (University of Oklahoma Press, 2025). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,201/253. ISBN:978-0-8061-9540-7 $36.95]

Though immortalized as the country's man of the hour during the critical five-month standoff in Charleston Harbor that preceded the outbreak of the Civil War, Kentuckian Robert Anderson's long professional life in uniform had other moments worthy of note. Spanning nearly forty years, Anderson's army career encompassed key roles in a number of the nation's most significant nineteenth-century wars and domestic conflicts. The entire breadth of that national service is revealed in historian Wesley Moody's biography Hero of Fort Sumter: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Anderson.

A bit more than half of Moody's narrative covers Anderson's early life and antebellum military career. According to the author, there is no definitive evidence in Anderson's own hand that he desired a West Point education and army officer's life above all else. That his father was a Revolutionary War hero and many famous military men passed through the Anderson household in his youth must have had some impact, and Moody also credits Anderson's father's determination that all of his sons and daughters be given the best educational opportunities available, the free part of the rigorous West Point education having added appeal. After graduation, Anderson accompanied older brother Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., the newly appointed United States ambassador to Colombia, on a long journey to South America. The author maintains that it was there that Anderson, in the capacity of official aide, received his first practical instruction in developing the diplomatic skills and sensibilities that would serve him so well later on in his career. Unfortunately, Anderson's experiences in Colombia were not all positive. His brother ended up dying in the country, and the long-term sequelae of the malarial disease the younger Anderson first contracted there would negatively impact his general health and ability to carry out his professional duties off and on for the rest of his life.

In addition to temporary assignment on diplomatic-oriented missions that took him to the U.S.-Canada border as a close aide to General Winfield Scott as well as to aforementioned Colombia, Anderson led troops in the field during the Black Hawk, Seminole, and Mexican wars. All of those episodes are detailed in the text. Anderson also translated and adapted for U.S. service an artillery instruction manual. During the war with Mexico, Anderson, who was assigned to the Third Artillery throughout most of his antebellum service, directed a battery at Vera Cruz and also fought in the capacity of an infantry officer during some of General Scott's brilliant series of battles that ultimately captured the enemy capital. During the Battle of Molino Del Rey, Anderson was wounded badly enough to force a premature end to his front-line combat role in the war. He was also rewarded with a brevet promotion. Sick leave and light duties largely characterized Anderson's activities between the end of the war with Mexico and the presidential election of 1860. It was during that interval that he was permanently transferred from the Third to the First Artillery regiment.

Less than two weeks after Lincoln's election, now Major Anderson was summoned to Washington and assigned command of the small army garrison at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. The question that arises is 'why Anderson?' According to Moody, Anderson was the personal choice of Secretary of War Floyd, and the decision was made without consultation with army general-in-chief Winfield Scott, who knew Anderson very well. In the author's view, it seems likely that Anderson was chosen for his strong reputation as an officer possessing an exceptionally keen sense of duty and honor, and his Kentucky background would make him acceptable to South Carolina authorities (with whom he would have to closely interact) without causing a general outcry among northerners. That makes sense.

Moody's characterization of Anderson's personality traits supports the notion that the major was the right man at the right place at the right time. On multiple occasions during his army service, Anderson expressed in his letters a sensitivity toward how his actions might affect the enemy. For example, during the bombardment of Vera Cruz he seemed to be just as concerned about the well-being of Mexican civilians and soldiers on the receiving end as he was about doing his own duty. Though his superiors might have been unaware of it (though he was close with Scott), that empathic quality and personal nature not prone to commit rash acts of violence certainly contributed to Anderson being the right sort of officer and person to command U.S. forces in Charleston Harbor during the volatile months following secession. Another example the book cites of Anderson's sensitivity toward others was his long-term advocacy for creation of a government-funded soldier's home for former enlisted men in need.

That Anderson's tempered actions during the Sumter crisis frustrated friend and foe alike speaks to the delicate balance the Kentuckian struck between fulfilling his duty and not provoking conflict. Anderson refused to bow to demands from South Carolina, and later Confederate, authorities who viewed his stealthy withdrawal of the harbor garrison to Fort Sumter as an act of provocation, while on his own side many of his subordinate officers and men thought Anderson not aggressive enough in projecting federal authority over the situation. Adding to Anderson's worries and strains were uncertain communications and vaguely drawn instructions with Washington, which the transition from the Buchanan to the Lincoln administration did not greatly improve. The nearly five months that Anderson spent in Charleston Harbor have already been explored at length among numerous books and articles, so readers won't find much in the way of new material, but Moody's text offers a fresh revisit of those well-documented events from Anderson's perspective.

Still ailing from the mental and physical stresses imposed by sitting for months upon what was essentially a ticking time bomb, Anderson, as the widely acknowledged hero of the day, found himself constantly under demand after his return north and was granted little time for rest and recuperation. Promoted to brigadier general in May 1861 and assigned to head the Department of Kentucky, Anderson was placed in yet another military command position fraught with political turmoil both real and potential, the successful navigation of which required Solomonic wisdom and discretion. That this roughly four-month period, which spanned the sudden end of Kentucky neutrality and the mass influx of troops from both sides into the state, is discussed in only a handful of pages primarily focusing on administrative matters leads one to wonder whether there is more to be said. In the author's view, Anderson's action that had the most lasting significance was his getting future army commanders George Thomas and William T. Sherman transferred to the western theater, where, of course, both men eventually thrived to the enormous benefit of the Union war effort. Though supporters of the Union cause in Kentucky evinced some dissatisfaction with Anderson's conservative approach, Moody does not cite any other factors beyond "the stress and fatigue of command" (pg. 190) being behind Anderson's September 1861 request for relief of command and recommendation that Sherman be his replacement.

Anderson's health did not fully recover at any point during the war, leaving us to ponder where he might have ranked among Union generals had his weakened constitution held up to the demands of higher field command. As Moody explains, Anderson's further Civil War service was limited to a brief appointment to the relatively stress-free post as commander of Newport, Rhode Island's Fort Adams before official retirement, though he did return briefly in a Department of the East staff role. By far the most memorable act of the rest of Anderson's Civil War career was his triumphal return to Charleston Harbor and ceremonial re-raising at Fort Sumter of the original garrison flag surrendered four years earlier. After the war, Anderson was still in demand for public events, but he preferred a more quiet existence, moving to France with his family and dying there in 1871.

A brisk read at just over two-hundred pages of narrative, Wesley Moody's Hero of Fort Sumter offers Civil War readers a more than solid description and appreciation of the entire breadth of Robert Anderson's decades of dutiful service to his country. Moody's biography also contains a great many insights into its subject's character and how those qualities, along with what Anderson experienced during the early stages of his professional career, shaped how he would act during the defining moment of his life in Charleston Harbor when the fate of the nation was in the balance.