14 Fox and Geese

Fox and Geese
by Becky Brown

Fox and Geese can represent the standoff for control of Fort Sumter that occupied political discussions in early April 150 years ago. While spring bloomed, an uneasiness settled North and South as Lincoln took over the federal government. Sarah Rousseau Espey in Alabama sought solace in her needlework.

March 25, 1861

Pretty day, C. started to Georgia this morning, our folks [slaves] commenced planting corn; I still feel that strange depression of spirit, and dread of coming evil for which I cannot account; it seems that something dreadful is before us. Commenced fringing a counterpane.

Lincoln's first crisis was re-supplying the Union Fort Sumter in Charleston's harbor. Food was running out and South Carolinians threatened to fire upon any ships that might try to bring supplies. Gustavus Fox recently rejoined the Navy and he had an idea. President Buchanan had rejected this plan for sending ships stealthily to Charleston but Lincoln told him to go ahead. Fox headed south in command of the steamer Baltic following the cutter Harriet Lane (named for Buchanan's niece.) The next day the U.S.S. Pawnee departed.

Would South Carolina troops fire on the U.S. Navy and be viewed as the aggressors? Attacking the U.S. Navy would surely be an act of war. It was a game of Fox and Geese, and Fox was out maneuvered. The Confederates assaulted the Union-held Fort before the Baltic and the other ships arrived. Who was the aggressor then? Wasn't the Southern state just defending her borders?

The Confederates assaulted the Fort from the batteries in Charleston harbor. After observing the two-day battle, Fox and the Baltic rescued the federal soldiers who abandoned Fort Sumter to the Confederacy.

The Confederate flag flies over a battered Fort Sumter

1861

On April 16, Sarah Espey wrote:

A stormy day and getting cold….Thomas went to Hale's and learned that the Carolinians have taken Fort Sumter and that our other volunteer company is ordered to Fort-Pickens, so I suppose the war is now opened….

The Fox and Geese pattern is a 19th-century design that was given that name in Carrie Hall's 1935 index to patterns. There are many variations of these four patches made of large and small triangles, but no record of what mid-19th-century quilters might have called them. It's #1313 in my Encyclopedia and BlockBase.

Cutting an 8" Finished Block

A - Cut 2 light and 2 dark squares 2-7/8"

Cut each in half diagonally to make two triangles. You need 4 of each shade.

B - Cut 4 dark squares 2-1/2"

C - Cut 1 light and 1 dark square 4-7/8".

Cut each in half diagonally to make two triangles. You need 2 of each shade.

Finish by making a larger 4-patch.

Read Sarah Espey's diary for the year 1862 online here:
http://files.usgwarchives.org/al/cherokee/history/espy_diary_3.txt

Gustavus Fox was a Navy man who'd graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis and served in the Mexican War. In the 1850s he worked as an "agent for the Bay State Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts." Can we translate that to "a sales rep for a woolen mill?" He became Assistant Secretary of the Union Navy during the War and afterward went back to the woolen business in Massachusetts.

The Bay State Mills were the largest woolen mills

in Massachusetts in the late 19th century