Southern Bridge and Fort Sumter

Two realities on a nighttime walk

It is a breathtaking night as I walk south along the road that skirts the water. Black sky, palm trees, water. Everything is luscious and green. 

My Airpods are on, and a man with a Southern voice is reading Erik Larson’s latest book, The Demon of Unrest. It’s about the lead-up to the Civil War.

The oars were audible before the boat came into view, this despite a noisy wind that coarsened the waters of the bay. It was very late on a black night.

Nighttime walks have become a favorite pastime in Florida, and they almost always involve two realities, one in the physical world and another in my mind.

Looking left across a glimmering Lake Worth, I see twinkling lights, the silhouette of a tower, and a giant American flag. It’s Mar-a-Lago. I imagine what’s happening there now, picturing a gala rivaling the aesthetics of a Real Housewives audition.

The boat reached its wharf at twelve forty-five A.M., Friday, April 12, 1861, destined to be the single-most consequential day in American history.

That’s the day the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter with the blast of a mortar at 4:30am. Could they have imagined what it would lead to?

Ahead of me is the Marjorie Merriweather Post Memorial Causeway, though everyone here calls it Southern Bridge. Post was a socialite who previously owned Mar-a-lago, married four different men, and spent the 1930s collecting art in Stalin-era Moscow when her third husband was ambassador. On nighttime walks like this two years ago, I listened to a fictionalized biography of hers called The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, which was fun. One reviewer described her marriages this way: “She married a snob, an adulterer, an opportunist and a homosexual, in that order.”

In those 113 days, this fortress, named for Thomas Sumter, a Revolutionary War hero, had become a profoundly dangerous place to invade and could have resisted attack quite possibly forever, but for one fatal flaw: It was staffed by men, and men had to eat.

I wonder if America could experience a civil war once again: Is the 2024 election all that different from the election of 1860? I push the thought away. Perhaps it’s best not to let my realities intersect, Jeffie-Boy!

You can tell summer is approaching because the air feels steam-room thick and warm like a bath you want to soak in after a long day. I breathe at a steady pace as I turn onto the bridge. I feel relaxed. The kid is in bed and this is my reward. God I love this.

Headlights pass like shooting stars. The breeze off the water feels like a fan from the heavens. I look left across the midnight-blue water and see the West Palm Beach skyline twinkle like the stars above, while boats and condo buildings glisten in the foreground.

On the stillest nights, at nine o'clock, Major Anderson could hear the great bells in the distant witch-cap spire of St. Michael's Church.

At the top of the bridge, there’s a rotunda for views and a tower where the Drawbridge Operator determines when to make the bridge go erect and allow super-yachts to pass — a Viagra commercial waiting to happen. The city rebuilt the entire causeway just last year. Everything looks new.

Spanish-speaking men hold poles off the side of the bridge, casting for fish 40 feet down. As I pass, I peek inside their buckets and then feel a touch of resentment for having to dodge hard-to-see fishing lines from poles propped up over the sidewalk. Who do you think you are to block the sidewalk! Just as I wonder if I should feel unsafe, one of the men smiles and politely moves out of my way. I smile back and remember one of my heuristics for Florida culture: people who fish are usually nice.

Free and enslaved Blacks together accounted for over 40 percent of the population of South Carolina's chief city, Charleston, and this caused uneasiness among its white citizens.

I am struck by how the planter class developed an elaborate moral philosophy justifying slavery.

They called themselves "the chivalry." As the prominent South Carolina planter James Henry Hammond put it, they were "the nearest to noblemen of any possible in America."

Atop the bridge and walking down now, I see it stretch into a flatter causeway with a zig-zag sidewalk, a beach, and parking spots before ending with a final, baby bridge. A skinny older man with pitch-black skin and a t-shirt passes me and says how you doin’.

There was a growing fear that maybe South Carolina's best days were behind her.

I recall the palpable feeling of dispossession that hung over the Trump movement when I was a part of it.

I walk a hundred yards down a zig-zag sidewalk where my son likes to scooter as fast as he can and I race to catch up. I reach the parking lot area where Trump supporters gather when there’s big news and hold flags and signs to passing cars. The crowds have grown less attractive since living here, and I can’t tell if that’s because I’ve changed or they have.

All of Anderson's officers voted to stay put and not surrender the fort before then.

My ancestors fought for the North. I probably would’ve been like General Logan, I think to myself. He’s the namesake of my old DC neighborhood, a Northerner who understood the grievances of the South.

I touch the pillar at the end of the bridge, just as my son and I do when he scooters here. I look over the fence at Mar-a-Lago and see tennis courts, palm trees swaying in the wind, and a structure for security that looks like a life-guard stand. The main house has the signature look of its architect, Addison Mizner, a mash-up of Mediterranean style made for the Gilded Age.

"Sir," it read, "By authority of Brigadier-General Beauregard, commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time." It was three-twenty a.m. Anderson accepted this without comment.

The honor to notify you… I am struck by this phrase.

I wipe my forehead and turn around. I begin walking back the same way I got here. Shortly after, a new chapter begins.

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My sincere thanks to

CansaFis Foote

for his expert feedback on drafts.