American History Hit - The First 12 Days of the Civil War

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

In April 1861, Union forces having lost the first battle of the Civil War, attention turned to the Confederacy's likely next target - Washington DC.Entirely unprepared, the American capital was to be undefended for the next 12 days. To explore the fears, preparations and movements of these days, Don is joined by Tony Silber, author of 'Twelve Days: How the Union Nearly Lost Washington DC in the First Days of the Civil War'.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.All music from Epidemic Sound/All3 Media Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's the spring of 1861 here in Washington, D.C., still a developing metropolis. Though Pierre L'Enfant's grand design of wide avenues and iconic landmarks has been laid out,

much of the National Mall remains a messy patchwork of muddy fields, scattered trees, and grazing livestock. The Capitol building remains unfinished, its dome still encased in scaffolding, while the streets linking it to the Executive Mansion are, rough, uneven, and dimly lit at night. The erection of the magnificent obelisk honoring George Washington, its cornerstone laid 13 years earlier in 1848, has stalled due to lack of funding. It won't be finished until 1879.

Nonetheless, D.C. is home now to 75,000 people and growing as the nation expands west. But when news of the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina reaches Washington, everything comes to a stands day. Still, for the next 12 days, this fledgling metropolis will be a twitching center of a nervous nation, now teetering on the brink of civil war. Good day, all. I'm Don Wildman, and you've clicked through to American History Hit. We drop new episodes Monday and Thursday. Unless you're a subscriber, then you'll get us a day early with zero ads. Go to HistoryHit.com. On April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery let loose on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. instigating a Confederate takeover of a federal installation, thus making war with the United States of America inevitable.

But 34 hours later, lacking adequate firepower, munitions, and supplies, Sumter's commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered. Now, we've covered the Battle of Fort Sumter in a previous episode, number 183 for anyone keeping track. So we won't focus on those events now, but rather on the fateful weeks that followed. The book 12 Days, How the Union Nearly Lost Washington in the First Days of the Civil War, addresses this critical and confusing period, and was authored by our guest today, journalist and business executive Tony Silber. Welcome, Tony. Nice to have you on the show. Thanks, Tom. I'm glad to be here. I'm excited.

I have always wondered about this. In the days immediately following the surrender of Sumter, it would have seemed so obvious that the Southern forces march right into Washington, take the place over. D.C. is a southern city. It is a slave-holding city at the time. It was made out of Virginia and Maryland. Why did that not happen? Was it so well defended?

No, actually, it was the opposite. D.C. was not defended at all. It was barely defended. There were maybe 1,100, 1,200, local militia, many of whom were disloyal. And there was no United States Army to speak of. There was probably a little more than 16,000 men in the U.S. Army. I say men deliberately, right?

They were mostly scattered west of the Mississippi on the frontier. So the city was unbelievably vulnerable. As you say, it was a slaveholding city, and it was deep within hostile territory. What became hostile territory, right? Maryland was surrounded out on three sides and Virginia on the other. As to why the Confederates didn't march in, I mean, that's the question that's probably been debated over the last 160 or so years. There's few reasons that I outlined in the book, but it is something that continue to be an open question and discuss. We'll drill down to the idea of that as we go here, but let's work our ways towards it.

The idea of a U.S. military was so fundamentally different in those days. I mean, we didn't really have a standing army to speak of, little Navy. The U.S. relied, as you suggest there, on state and local militia. But hadn't Lincoln and Buchanan before him bulked up? I mean, didn't they anticipate the need for troops? Short answer is no. Lincoln was only on the job as president for seven weeks. And I think there was a reluctance on the part of Americans north, mostly north, but some south that it would ever come to blows.

I think the sentiment in the government, William Seward, the Secretary of State and Lincoln and others, was that just let tensions cool, temperatures come down and things will be all right. But more than that, it goes back to the founding of the country. And the founders expressed in the federalist papers and elsewhere, you know, were very adamantly opposed to a standing army. thought they would come to no good. So instead, the states all had their own independent armies. Today, it's the National Guard. So there is some similarity. But the law was when the country is threatened, call up the National Guard. Yeah. And what about the Confederates? I mean, clearly they were readying for major action. Yeah, that's right. Also a great comparison, because the Confederates started with the secession. Well, during the secession winter, the Confederates,

one state after another seceded, starting, I think, on December 20th by South Carolina. But they all defanced themselves, declared themselves, legally defined themselves as independent republics until the formation of the Confederacy in early February. So they all started raising militias, the embryonic version of a national army. And each state had these malicious sort in training, ready to roll, issued equipment. And especially South Carolina, probably had somewhere around 5,000. Well, at the end of something, it had probably had 7,000 organized troops on the ground. It is a fascinating difference in the mindset of this country from the modern version, which has this huge military, massive military, obviously,

versus pre, this time in the 19th century and before, which is there was no call for that. It was just a sign of tyranny. If you had a federal army, the states should be worried because the monarch is going to come get you. That's right. That was the difference. between the United States then and now a lot of people feel the need to go back to that these days. But that's an important part of this conversation that comes up a lot. I imagine part of the challenge for the federal government at that time is that D.C. is really such a transient town. I mean, it's really purely a government center, not really a concentrated density like Baltimore or Philadelphia. All that permanent population comes after the Civil War and onward.

How did you research what the city was like then? I mean, there weren't the kinds of records that you would need, I would think. Yeah, well, there was the U.S. Census, which helped describe all kinds of things like ethnicity, total population, population of enslaved people, free African Americans, you know, a variety of things. So you start with that. Then it sort of comes down to anecdote. So, you know, there are, you know, as I was doing my research, I learned that this is an incredible trove of primary information there. I mean, people would write and write and write absolutely amazing. The newspapers themselves were really good at conveying day-to-day life at 1861.

That's one of the things I wanted to do in this book is put people on the scene. And so when you draw a contrast between the U.S. Army today and the thought of a national, unified government today versus then, is really striking. And I think it's hard for Americans to imagine essentially not having an army today, right? I mean, in the last 80 years since World War II, there's been an enormous military institution. So that becomes hard for Americans to imagine today. The U.S.S. Army had four generals in 1861, and three of them were over 70, right? So long past their prime, right? Right. But to your point about DC, it was just unbelievable amount of information about it that you can write. And it's super colorful stuff. So what it comes down to is there was a permanent population. It was southern, right? Southern sympathizers, Virginians, people who ended up migrated north and then stayed there. And then there was the transient population, the political population. And that was mostly, in many ways, it was northerners. And so there was a real tension between those people and the sort of semi-aristocratic affluent.

Southerns. Your title, 12 days. I mean, does that refer to the fear that people were having that after Sumter, the attack was coming? Were D.C. people fearful of that? The U.S. government, the military chain of command, General Wimtell Scott and Lincoln and his people were, became increasingly convinced that an attack was going to occur. I think north and south, the newspapers, the popular opinion, the conversation was all around an attack on D.C. And it really is a remarkable thing because today, in our own imaginations, is very hard to conceive that, you know, the national capital would be deep within hostile territory and undefended.

Yeah. But yeah, everybody, during those 12 days, the universal consensus was the first seat of the battle would be in Washington, in or around Washington, possibly in Baltimore, right? Again and again, you hear this phrase, push the theater of war up to the Susquehanna River. So, yeah, I mean, everybody, and that's the other thing, you know, when we go back over this time, you know, it's easy for us to assume that, you know, all, you know, the outcome was what it was, right? But that's not really the way it was then. You know,

everybody on both sides anticipated a fight. And the calls for capturing Washington in April of 1861 were extraordinary, right? I mean, all Confederates from all levels of government, including the United States Supreme Court justice, were urging Jefferson Davis to attack Washington. Yeah. What 12 days do you refer to in the title? As you pointed out, I start with the Sunday, the 14th, and continue through the 25th, the Thursday, which is when the New York 7th Regiment arrived in D.C. and essentially saved it. It's really a dramatic moment. John Nicolet and John Hayd, Lincoln's secretary, has described it as an epoch, which is like,

that's striking. And yet that epoch is not considered really at all now. And I wonder why that is. And sometimes I think it's, well, we tend to focus on the major battles or we tend to focus on the technological and social changes that came out of the Civil War, and not on this period, which was really consequential and in many ways pivotal. Was it as simple as people were packing up their wagons and their carriages and heading out of town? Was there, were people fleeing the city?

Absolutely. And it increased. Like on the Sunday in March of 1861, after the inauguration, the city was packed with job seekers, right? It was the first Republican administration. And there were many, many, many jobs to be filled. And many people wanted those jobs. So the hotels were teeming with people. The White House was teeming with people seeking jobs. But in the second six or so of those 12 days, when it became much more and more clear that a battle might occur, people began fleeing. So I think on the Sunday, that would have been the 21st, the train stopped.

It had been that there were like four trains plus a freight train that came into D.C. every day and departed. and there were no trains. So people couldn't get out. So before that, and the two or three days before that, the trains were packed. Everybody was trying to get out. It was a panic. It was chaos. It was very much like, you know, to use, I think it's an appropriate metaphor in some ways,

is the fall of side up, right? I mean, it was just people were fleeing all their belongings and carriages and wheelbarrows and just trying to get out of the city. So if the Confederacy didn't have an attack plan in place post-sumter, what was their plan immediately after? I think the Confederacy was, at that point, was very much focused on adding territory, adding states, adding strength. And so in that context, Maryland became unbelievably important. And so I think Jefferson Davis most likely was, he's president of a consideracy, he was most likely interested in an opportunistic approach. So I think he wanted Virginia and

Maryland to team up and get Virginia to succeed, which it came very close to. And then once that Maryland secession is secured, D.C. is not a plausible place to keep the federal government, right? And not only that, it became much more likely in that event that the British would recognize the Confederate states. And that would change the entire tone of the war, the entire tenor, maybe even end it. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Jefferson Davis has a famous quote as presidents of the Confederacy. All we want is to be left alone. I don't remember when that quote was said. Was it in the aftermath of Sumter? It was on April 29th and a message to the Confederate Congress. And it's interesting that that quote is what we all remember Jefferson Davis by and the political posture of the Confederacy. But during those 12 days prior to that, it was anything but all you want is to be left alone. It's remarkable. I mean, you can go down. I probably track two dozen sources of, you know, the opposite of that sentiment, including from Davis himself, like with pre-inauguration, he said there will be no war in our territory. It will be carried. into the enemy's territory. The British ambassador, back then it was called minister to the United

States, Lord Richard Lyon, said the apprehensions of the United States government afford this city, the chiefs of the Southern Confederacy loudly declare their intention of the hacking and be if the border states join them. Right. And you can down that list, North Carolina governor, South Carolina governor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Don Campbell, the railroad executives. Davis himself to the governor of Virginia said, sustain Baltimore, if practicable, we will reinforce you. John Bankhead Magruder, who was a fairly prominent U.S. Army captain, I think, was what his rank was. Later became a Confederate general, said, give me 5,000 men. And if I don't take Washington, you may take not only my sword by my life. The Secretary of War of the Confederacy said,

I would prophesize that the flag would now flaunt the breeze here in Montgomery will float over the old dome at Washington before the 1st of May. I, you know, I could go to this company. I have another half a dozen quotes right here. But yeah, that was their thing. They wanted, They craved capturing Washington because they knew what the stakes were. They knew what was on the line and the strategic value of Washington. And therein lies the dilemma. So why didn't they is this historical question and the counterfactuals can fly. You know, if they did take Washington, all of the above would have happened.

Those border states would have collapsed. The whole thing would have collapsed. England comes into the play, right? Yeah. And yet therein lies the dilemma. I mean, why wouldn't they, if they had such eagerness and such a mission in mind, take Washington, D.C., the counterfactuals fly from there. So many circumstances would have been different. I think what they didn't do was respond quickly enough, which is paradoxical because they were

much better prepared to do it. They had this organized army in Charleston. They had president, who was fire secretary of war, who was West Point graduate, who had all the advantages. And Lincoln, on the other hand, was not only had no executive experience at all, but certainly no military experience. I think that the, Bottom line is that the Confederates were moving troops north during those days, but they didn't move fast enough. And we have the Northern State militias to thank for that. Yes, exactly. So let's go through the events of how the actual, what is the actual response? Lincoln calls for Northern States to send troops ASAP to defend this capital.

What's the response on who's answering the call? The response is overwhelming in the North. I mean, it's overwhelming on both sides. On the one side, it's like deep, deep hostility and then a conclusion that only one thing, there's only one outcome, which is war. That's in the South. And in the North, the state governors and the people were just, put it another way, the ambivalence of the prior 30, 40 years was swept away, was washed away by a tidal wave. It became a unified country in the North.

John Dix, who was a secretary of the Treasury, a very prominent American at that time, I think Governor of New York, said the North Rose is one mayor. And then, you know, other observers said, well, anybody who saw the reaction in the North would recognize that the strong, beating heart of this nation, and I'm paraphrasing, was not going to go down without a bitter, bloody, long fight. So that was the sentiment in the North. The problem was the militias were inoperative. They were farcical. And that was the challenge. So from state to state, these militias weren't ready to fight. But some were more so than others. right? 100%. Massachusetts and New York were fully ready. Rhode Island population 140,000 in 1861,

was somewhat ready, thanks to their very rich governor who funded a lot of themselves. Pennsylvania, which should have been ready, being the closest northern state to Washington, D.C., but Pennsylvania was disastrously unready. Everybody else, they just, you know, recognized reality and pushed the requisition dates back to late May. I saw something else that you had recorded, another, interview, and you mentioned that New York was one of the most top military forces in the world at the time. That surprised me. Yeah, that was the New York 7th Regiment. It was a fascinating story. It probably has its roots in the war of 1812, but it became, just to back up for one minute. In the North, military organizations, militias became, you know, extravagance. The state governments

wouldn't fund them. Didn't want to fund them. They were looked upon by the rest of the societies in the North as an extraneous, farcicle, you know, unnecessary, social clubs for men. But that was the overview. But there were some militia organizations in the North, especially in the big cities that were very active in the North during the decades of 1840s and 1850s, very often putting down riots. And it sounds very strange, but back in those days, the government wasn't equipped. Local state, federal government wasn't equipped to deal with these social conflicts and tensions that were constantly bubbling up. Sure. So they relied on the state militias who would put them down with Wiesel Force.

So the New York 7th had its roots in that kind of background, but it essentially was a social, it was a social club for very rich, very connected New York City men. And it took its job seriously and was ready to roll. It had 990-something men in April of 1861 far more than any other regiment. The New York City regiments had to end the Boston ones had to man up, staff up, recruit to get double their size during that month. But 7th New York was ready. General Scott wanted the 7th New York. Yeah, it was probably the most respected military organization in the world at that point. It's because of the industrialization of the country, really, you end up with these workers, you know, piling into these cities. And many of those militias are about keeping control of those workplaces, aren't they? I mean, to be on call for those factory owners and so forth. And that becomes more and more urgent as we move into the Gilded Age and beyond with unions and so forth. It's a fascinating.

difference, but New York, of course, would have the most ready to go place because they had the biggest worker population. There is an unprecedented wave of patriotism at this time, which is interesting because politically it has been a very, very dicey time in America, obviously, through the 1850s, this whole late antebellum period has moments like the Dred Scott decision, the Missouri Crown Prize has been trashed. It's all kinds of things are happening politically that are getting argued out in the papers and in debate societies and so forth. suddenly Sumter is attacked and it is replaced with this wave of patriotism, as you say, right? Absolutely. Yeah, as I mentioned, it was the North Rose is one man. There's some incredible anecdotes,

some of which I included in the book, where all the varied political observations and positions and opinions were just negated, right? And they were ready to fight. Yep. You march us methodically through these days in the book. Let's point out a few interesting ones. April 17th, Virginia secedes, this was a major moment, not just strategically, but also spiritually for this country. Virginia is where it all began, you know, when you're talking about George Washington and so forth, for that state to go is a gigantic blow to the national identity. It's also strategically, directly across the Potomac River. I mean, at this point, a very small amount of water stands in the way of this attack. Talk about that day specifically. Yeah, Virginia was the

source of the original sense of unity in the United States between north and south. Virginia was an industrial state, well, more industrialized, I should say, than the agricultural cotton-based south of Gulf states. Virginia had a military industrial base. It had the fifth largest population in the United States, although if you include enslaved people, they were fully a third of the Virginia population. So there was a long period of ambivalence on the, in Virginia. I think Virginia was, you know, if you started in March of 1861 when Lincoln was inaugurated, Virginia was essentially unionist. Part of the reason for that is because the area, the mountainous area that's now known as West Virginia was not a slaveholding center. And so they did not have this

stake in slavery. And I should just make an interjection here that the war was fundamentally about slavery and, you know, this period and the research I found just underscores it. But so the governor, John Letcher, was essentially a secessionist, and he formed a secession convention early in 1861, I think January when he was re-inaugated. You know, the idea being to, you know, assess the impact of a regional president, regional being, quote unquote, and decide what Virginia had to do. So this thing dragged on for a couple of months, you know, not really moving anywhere, but after Sumpter and even more so after the call for 75,000 troops, the sentiment changed dramatically. And they voted in secret to secede on the Wednesday of the 17th. At the same time, they sent their militia forces both to

Harpers Ferry and to the Washington, the Norfolk Navy Yard. The outcome being that both of those facilities were lost to the U.S. Yeah, I mean, it is happening. April 18th, Washington's severed from the north, telegraph lines are cut, railways are impassable, six bridges are destroyed, two railroads are cut off. I mean, for a week, Washington is isolated, correct? Correct. It's very hard for us to imagine. I mean, here I am in D.C. I live in Connecticut, and, you know, just took the Amtrak down the other day. And, you know, and we have internet connection. We have texts, we have phone. We have all those things, newspapers. They didn't have all of that. They relied on the telegraph. They relied on the railroads. The newspapers.

would get there two or three days later, right? So it's very hard to imagine, as for us today, that Washington, D.C. was in communicado. It could not be contacted by somebody in New York or by somebody in Harrisburg, completely cut off. The railroad bridges burned, the telegraph wires cut. It was hard for people to get through. The trains ultimately stopped. Yeah, I mean, it's just in the dark, isolated, marooned. Well, never mind that. Getting troops there is now nearly impossible. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Let's talk about the Baltimore riot. By 18th and 19th of April, these troops are trying to get to Baltimore from New York, from Massachusetts, and so forth. But the railways have become very, very difficult, obviously, for those reasons. Something happens in Baltimore, that is, very inflamed. I mean, there's a huge riot having to do with the troops going through. And that's really important. This is, I just want to say, this is one of the pressures that Lincoln is carrying into office. He realizes that there are these states like Maryland, who are the border states, Kentucky, all these borders states along the way,

if he loses them, he loses the war in his mind. That's the grand strategy. And you see why it's so difficult for him because even at this moment, as troops are trying to get through to the nation's capital to save it, there's a lot of people who in Baltimore are trying to stop them. Yeah, Baltimore was a fundamentally secessionist city. And it's complicated to explain because Baltimore was also, you know, there was a description of Baltimore as the northernmost southern city and the southernmost northern city. So in the sense of, in the north, in terms of its northern characteristics, it did have, the 25% of the population of Baltimore was foreign-born, mostly Irish and Germans who were the great migrants of that era. And it was an industrial

city, it was a shipping city, transportation city. And so based on that, you'd think that Baltimore would be aligned more with Philadelphia, you know, in New York City or Boston. But it wasn't because it was also a slave-holding state. And they aligned emotionally and mostly politically with the, with what they called their sister states, the other slave-holding states. But so by the period that you're describing, Baltimore is ungovernable. It's a frenzy. It's out of control. And for days, you know, the first half of those 12 days, it rose and rose and rose. And it was called. ready to explode. So when federal troops started coming through, it did explode. Yeah, exactly. I mean, let's talk about that. You're talking about the troops are on these trains and suddenly

there are throngs of Baltimoreians, is that what you call them? All pressing in from both sides. This is a highly dangerous moment. Highly dangerous moment. And so it starts, it starts on the 18th, the Thursday, when these Pennsylvania troops unarmed, ununiformed, completely unready to fight, summoned to Washington anyway. John Hay called them the unlit patriotism coming ragged into Washington from Pennsylvania. So they come through and there were a couple of companies of U.S. federal troops. So they marched. Back in those states of railroads, you got off your railroad line from the north and they got across the city

and to pick up the one from the south. In some ways, it's similar to Penn Station versus Grand Central Station in New York today. So these troops have to cross the city. This is the 18th. This is the Pennsylvanians. And, you know, they're harassed. They're taunted. Some of them are attacked.

One in particular is 65-year-old African-American man who sort of was part of the company. He was attacked. And Nick Biddle was his name. And he became, you know, in many ways, the people in his company described him as the first, first time blood was drawn in a hostile situation in the Civil War. So that was on the Thursday. On the Friday, the 6th, Massachusetts has a decision. They're overnight Thursday or Friday.

They're in Pennsylvania. And they have to decide whether to take the train through Baltimore or maybe take some other route. They decide to go through Baltimore. They stop at a separate trade station coming from Philadelphia. And they also have to cross the city. The plan being that the railroads cooperated on a shuttle and then all the McClellan all the train cars across the city on Forrestraun tracks. Wow.

Yeah. And so, but the colonel of the six Massachusetts did not want to do that. He wanted the marches and then across. It didn't happen. It felt that whole idea fell apart. And so, you know, this enormous mob shows up. It turns hostile. It grows.

It grows and grows and grows from, you know, a few hundred to a few thousand to 20,000, by some estimates. And it's incredibly violent. Meanwhile, I think four companies of that, Six Massachusetts were left behind in the fiasco of, you know, whether to haul the cars across by horse or to march across. So these troops are cut off at the Philadelphia station, and they have to march across as about 240 men. And it's harrowing. Like four Massachusetts soldiers were killed then and more than 100 wounded. And, you know, maybe as many is, well, you know,

there'd be a number of Baltimoreians killed that day is uncertain, but the newspapers, reported it as 12. Yeah, this is a frightening episode and largely forgotten by Americans that this is these are the conditions we're dealing with. This is the kind of strife that is even within a so-called northern state when the time comes. Right. But somehow the first New York regiment, the seventh regiment, gets through on April 25th, and this is the bookend of your book. They're the main force that needs to get there. How do they arrive in Washington? This is like a really colorful and long story. They leave New York on the 19th, along with the 8th Massachusetts Regiment, travel separately to Philadelphia. The 8th, Massachusetts is led by a colonel named Timothy Monroe,

but he's a non-entity, the real decision maker on the Massachusetts side of Benjamin Butler, who's a well-known name in Civil War. So they travel separately to get to Philadelphia. Butler hesitates. The New York 7th gets to Philadelphia, maybe eight hours later. they're very anxious to get to Washington, D.C. But the railroad operator, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore Railroad decides that it's not safe. They conclude that the bridges have been burned and that you can't get through the city without, you know, massive bloodshed. So they come up with an alternative route. They could take a ferry boat down to Annapolis.

And there's a spur line in Annapolis where they can take a train to connect to the main line into D.C. But it doesn't work that well. it doesn't work that easily. First of all, when Butler gets there first to Annapolis, and promptly, the ferry boat that he's on runs the ground. So he's stranded with 700 plus men on that ferry bond on the harbor of Annapolis. 24 hours later, the New York 7th gets there. They'd spend three or four days jockeying back and forth with the governor of Maryland and with each other, the New York 7th and the Massachusetts 8th. And an unbelievable waste of time. And then they finally decide to go forward together. And they go, that spur railroad line is torn up completely.

So they do this like sort of forced 24-hour march, repairing the tracks, heading to the main line. They get there on the morning of the Thursday, the 25th, and, you know, that dish is anxious. They don't know what's going to happen. And ultimately, General Scott's been running a train up and down to that junction a couple times a day. and they meet up, they get on the train, and they get to D.C. That's the seventh. Wow. Butler stays in Annapolis. Amazing. If they had not pulled this off, I mean, we've just touched on it, but I really want to lay this out. If the Confederates take Washington, D.C., Maryland secedes. The other border states probably don't stick with it. British realized that the Confederates are for real. They end up supporting the Confederators as an important trade partner for them.

It is utter demoralization for the North. I mean, we're not even in the war yet. And this moment, would have destroyed the whole effort. Fair to say that, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of the things that mystifies me is that people don't recognize that. I mean, people tend to say, well, Washington was vulnerable in 18, after the Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861, or during Jubal Early's incursion into Maryland in 1864. But the truth is, the city was not vulnerable during those periods. It was well defended. It had a series of forts. surrounding it, but it was vulnerable in April of 1861. And people don't recognize that that was at stake. And yes, you're right. If Maryland, you know, a secession of Maryland or an abandonment of

Washington, D.C. would have triggered a whole bunch of other things. And it came very close. That succession almost happened. It really almost happened. And so, yeah, as you say, the British had already warned the United States that they might have to recognize the Confederacy if certain things happened. So that was on the line. And as you point out, the British recognized the Confederacy, all bets are off. There's money flowing into the Confederacy. There's a potential war against the British, and that, you know, it changes everything. The amount of times that this country has walked the line, a tightrope, I should say, is extraordinary. And yet we wake up every morning these days, with this sort of casual feeling of safety. It's extraordinary how this history, how often in the

history. We are at this point. In summary, it will be a couple of months, as it turns out, before Union troops and the Confederates finally do meet on the field at the First Battle of Bull Rung, Manassas. And it turns out to be a disaster for the federal troops. That's how badly organized they would have been after some dirt, let alone, you know, three months later when they finally meet in an official battle. There's so much luck involved in this war, so much strange fate. It's a very interesting angle on it all, isn't it? You know, what I would leave the listener with is that this was a consequential moment. This was much more pivotal than we

acknowledge or accept today. I was very fortunate to be able to write about this probably more, you know, there's probably hundreds of thousands or 100,000-plus books written about the Civil War. There's more Civil War, American Civil War books out there than, you know, anything other than the Bible. So that I found an area of the Civil War that was relatively uncovered and got to just dig into that was a lot of harm. William Seward said there's always just enough virtue, but only just enough virtue in the

Republic to save it. Interesting. There you go. That's the perfect closing. Tony Silber is the author of 12 Days, How the Union Nearly Lost Washington in the first days of the Civil War. He's also president of Long Hill Media, involved in media branding, a big career. Thank you so much, Tony, for joining us.

Really appreciate it. Don, it was a pleasure. Thank you. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements

to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. so grateful for your support.