CHAP. III. Members; the "sand-hill" instructions were written on the day of General Cass's retirement from the Cabinet, and the issuing of the first rebel manifesto; and now on December 21st, the day after the adoption of the secession ordinance, Secretary Floyd signalized his official life by another effort to make the bloodless victory of the rebellion in South Carolina entirely easy and complete. Up to this point the secret intrigues of the conspiracy were carried on cautiously step by step, until peaceable secession under alleged State authority advanced from vague theory to accomplished practical fact, so far as unopposed popular action could bring it about. They had not only kept the Government on the defensive; they had actually rendered it defenseless, and the logic of its attitude indicated a willingness to be forced by further pressure of necessity to relinquish its hold upon the Charleston forts. By his rupture with General Cass, the President apparently conceded the proposition that the forts were simply "property" which South Carolina could bargain for without offense, and the United States sell without disgrace. But the conspirators were not satisfied with this hopeful prospect of bringing about the complete political disenthralment of the Palmetto State. They had boastfully announced their determination to have the forts after secession, and the zeal of their adherents would not suffer them to abate or delay the fulfillment of this promised conquest. Everything was ready to give South Carolina easy possession; coercion denied and reënforcements refused at Washington, secession proclaimed, vol unteer companies and scaling-ladders ready in CHAP. III. Charleston, Anderson fettered with secret instructions in Moultrie, and in Sumter and Pinckney each only a single ordnance sergeant, whose solitary musket had been angrily ordered back to the Charleston arsenal by Secretary Floyd,-leaving them armed with nothing but "worsted epaulets on their shoulders and stripes down their pantaloons" to represent the sovereignty and military power of the United States of America. The formal demand of the forts by the commission already dispatched to Washington by the Convention would terminate the Presidential truce; and then half a night's campaign, and the lives of a score of the Charlestonians whose fingers were itching to plant scaling-ladders against the walls of Moultrie, would display the palmetto banner from every flag-staff in the harbor. Nevertheless, the more they prompted their newspaper scribblers and street-corner oracles to clamor for violence and bloodshed in public, the more the conspirators in secret feared and deprecated it, for they could not fail to see in it the reaction of the public endurance, the arousing of the Government and the North, and the premature and fatal destruction of their hitherto successful intrigue. 1860. The correspondence discloses, quite incidentally, that on the 21st of December, the day after the adoption of the formal "Secession Ordinance" at Charleston, Secretary Floyd for the first time brought to the notice of President Buchanan the Buchanan secret order which he had sent by Major Buell to Anderson, on his own responsibility, ten days I., p. 117. before. to Commissioners, Dec. 31, 1860. W. R. Vol. CHAP. III. Why did the Secretary on the 21st show the President a document which he ought to have submitted to him for approval on the 11th? The inference is that it was for an object, and the object appears in the action taken by the President, which action he has recorded as follows: The President having observed that Major Buell, in reducing to writing at Fort Moultrie the instructions he had verbally received, required Major Anderson, in case of attack, to defend himself to the last extremity, immediately caused the Secretary of War to modify this instruction. This extreme was not required by any principle of military honor or by any rule of war. It was sufficient "Mr. Buch- for him to defend himself until no reasonable hope should remain of saving the fort. The instructions were accordpp. 166, 167. ingly so modified, with the approbation of General Scott. anan's Administration," Scott (by Lay) to Larz Anderson, If, as here alleged, General Scott gave his approbation, it must have been only to the general direction and not to the specific language employed, for we have his recorded assertion that "the War Dec. 29, 1860. Department has kept secret from the General the instructions sent to the Major." The probability is, that Floyd did not further consult either the General or the President, for he personally wrote to Anderson as follows: W. R. Vol. I., p. 114. Sir: In the verbal instructions communicated to you by Major Buell, you are directed to hold possession of the forts in the harbor of Charleston, and if attacked to defend yourself to the last extremity. Under these instructions you might infer that you are required to make a vain and useless sacrifice of your own life, and the lives of the men under your command, upon a mere point of honor. This is far from the President's inten 1 General Scott also makes the same assertion in a letter written by his direction to General Twiggs, under date of December 1 tions. You are to exercise a sound military discretion CHAP. III. on this subject. It is neither expected nor desired that you should expose your own life or that of your men, in a hopeless conflict in defense of these forts. If they are invested or attacked by a force so superior that resistance would, in your judgment, be a useless waste of life, it will be your duty to yield to necessity, and make the best terms in your power. This will be the conduct of an honorable, brave, and humane officer, and you will be fully justified in such action. These orders are strictly confidential, and not to be communicated even to the officers under your command without close necessity. It is scarcely required to instruct an intelligent American officer in our day, that no professional duty requires him to sacrifice himself or his men upon any trifling point of honor. Self-respect and soldierly dignity, if not history and example, teach him the obvious truth. So far then from being a humanitarian precaution, the order seems plainly to have been worded to prepare the mind of Anderson for that easy surrender of his post which was now clearly the next step in the conspirators' programme. To them it doubtless appeared sure to follow as the natural and necessary sequence of their previous successes. At their bidding the President and Cabinet had created a fatal necessity; and now came Floyd's order to the practical effect that after a threatened attack or investment by a South Carolina army which they would take due pains to make "superior and overwhelming," after a show of force, with stage parade and flourish of trumpets, Anderson should "yield to necessity," and make the best terms in his power, march out with military courtesies, and give to South Carolina, Moultrie, Pinckney, Sumter, Floyd to Dec. 21,1860. Anderson, W. R. Vol. CHAP. III. Charleston Harbor, and de facto independence. Then under the same military necessity, aggravated and amplified by similar concerted seizures in other States, a yielding President, and a Cabinet dominated by treachery, could negotiate a settlement; Congress might ratify, and a distracted and despondent North accept the accomplished revolution. It was a brilliant plot, but with many flaws; and one of the greatest was that they counted without Anderson. Or rather, let us do them the justice to say, their intrigue seemed to them so complete, their control of the President and the War Department so absolute, that there appeared no reasonable chance that Anderson could become a marplot. The situation required no complicity on his part. He had but to tread the path of professional duty as marked out by Floyd, who had told him in plain words that the avoidance of a hopeless conflict in defense of these forts was the duty of an honorable, brave, and humane officer. There remained, therefore, but one danger, namely, that Anderson might transfer his force to Sumter. This point too they had effectually guarded. The Buell order was a virtual official prohibition until there should occur "an attack on or attempt to take possession of either one of them," and was so regarded by Anderson trie," p. 58. himself; the workmen in the forts were openly in sympathy with the secessionists; the forty muskets had been taken out of Foster's hands; and an espionage was kept up night and day as the critical time approached, by which the Charleston authorities were fully and credibly informed that not an additional man nor gun had been sent there. Doubleday, "Forts Sumter and Moul |