...ad bewildered the North and encouraged the South by declaring that if the latter desired to set up a governments of its own it had every moral right to do so. The little garrison of Fort Moultrie, in Charleston Harbor , threatened by a superior force and powerless against land attack, had spiked its guns on Christmas night, in 1860, and pulled away for Sumter, perched on its islet of rocks a mile from shore, hoiste...