How did Blacks React to the Bombardment of Ft. Sumter?

WJC

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During the rebel bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, diarist Mary Chesnut wrote:
Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Laurence sits at our door, as sleepy and as respectful and as profoundly indifferent. So are they all. They carry it too far. You could not tell that they hear even the awful row that is going on in the bay, though it is dinning into their ears night and day. And people talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. And they make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding their time?​
<Isabella D. Martin and Myrta L. Avary, editors, A Diary from Dixie, as wriien by Mary Boykin Chesnut. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1906), p. 38.>
How did other Blacks- slave and free- react?
 
Thanks for your response.
She clearly recognized how her peers had dehumanized Blacks. I wonder if she acknowledged her role in that as well.
Good question, but I was referring to how blacks got current detailed news and spread it rapidly in the slave community.

It was an excellent spy network that the Southerner overlooked for any number of reasons. The house-servants especially and any slave within earshot know secession was coming and later war was coming and could make plans.
 
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Speaking of the final days of the Buchanan Administration and the rebel bombardment of Fort Sumter, Frederick Douglass said:
Blissful illusions of hope were, in a measure, dispelled when the batteries of Charleston harbor were opened upon the starving garrison at Fort Sumter. For the moment the northern lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible. But he only showed his teeth, and clearly had no wish to use them. We preferred to fight with dollars, and not daggers. 'The fewer battles the better,' was the hopeful motto at Washington. 'Peace in sixty days' was held out by the astute Secretary of State. In fact, there was at the North no disposition to fight, no spirit of hate, no comprehension of the stupendous character and dimensions of the rebellion, and no proper appreciation of its inherent wickedness. Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper and had spread its death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had covered. Thus, while rebels were waging a barbarous war, marshaling savage Indians to join them in the slaughter, while rifled cannon-balls were battering down the walls of our forts, and the iron-clad hand of monarchical power was being invoked to assist in the destruction of our government and the dismemberment of our country, while a tremendous rebel ram was sinking our fleet and threatening the cities of our coast, we were still dreaming of peace. This infatuation, this blindness to the significance of passing events, can only be accounted for by the rapid passage of these events and by the fact of the habitual leniency and good will cherished by the North towards the South. Our very lack of preparation for the conflict disposes us to look for some other than the way of blood out of the difficulty. Treason had largely infected both army and navy. Floyd had scattered our arms, Cobb had depleted our treasury, and Buchanan had poisoned the political thought of the times by his doctrines of anti-coercion.​
<Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. (Hartford, CT, Park Publishing Company, 1882), p. 374.>
 
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