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came.
The
Secretary of War would not let us have a man in the way of reenforcement, the plea being that reenforcements would irritate the people.
The secessionists could hardly be restrained from attacking us, but the leaders kept them back, knowing that our workmen were laboring in their interests, at the expense of the
United States.
When
Captain Truman Seymour was sent with a party to the United States arsenal in
Charleston to get some friction primers and a little ammunition, a crowd interfered and drove his men back.
It became evident, as I told
Anderson, that we could not defend the fort, because the houses around us on
Sullivan's Island looked down into
Moultrie, and could be occupied by our enemies.
At last it was rumored that two thousand riflemen had been detailed to shoot us down from the tops of those houses.
I proposed to anticipate the enemy and burn the dwellings, but
Anderson would not take so decided a step at a time when the
North did not believe there was going to be war. It was plain that the only thing to be done was to slip over the water to
Fort Sumter, but
Anderson said he had been assigned to
Fort Moultrie, and that he must stay there.
We were then in a very peculiar position.
It was commonly believed that we would not be supported even by the
North, as the Democrats had been bitterly opposed to the election of
Lincoln; that at the first sign of war twenty thousand men in sympathy with the
South would rise in New York.
Moreover, the one to whom we
