[182] aggression; and for that reason you are not, without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile attitude, but you are to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and, if attacked, you are to defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an attack on, or attempt to take possession of either of them, will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps, whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.1
These instructions were afterward modified—as we are informed by Buchanan—so as, instead of requiring him to defend himself “to the last extremity,” to direct him to do so as long as any reasonable hope remained of saving the fort.2
Immediately after the secession of the state, the convention of South Carolina deputed three distinguished citizens of that state—Robert W. Barnwell, James H. Adams, and James L. Orr—to proceed to Washington, “to treat with the Government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, lighthouses, and other real estate, with their appurtenances, within the limits of South Carolina, and also for an apportionment of the public debt, and for a division of all other property held by the Government of the United States, as agent of the confederated States, of which South Carolina was recently a member; and generally to negotiate as to all other measures and arrangements proper to be made and adopted in the existing relation of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity between this Commonwealth and the Government at Washington.”
The commissioners, in the discharge of the duty entrusted to them, arrived in Washington on December 26th. Before they could communicate with the President, however—indeed, on the morning after their arrival—they were startled, and the whole country electrified, by the news that, during the previous night, Major Anderson had “secretly dismantled Fort Moultrie,”3 spiked his guns, burned his gun carriages, and removed his command to Fort Sumter, which occupied a more commanding position in the harbor. This movement changed the whole aspect of affairs. It was considered by the government and people of South Carolina as a violation of the implied pledge of a maintenance of the status quo; the remaining forts and other public property were at once taken possession of by the state; the condition of public feeling
