John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

Nor was this the only advantage which the conspiracy had secured. Since the 12th of January a condition of things existed in the harbor of Pensacola, Fla., similar to that at Charleston. The insurgents had threatened, and the officer in charge had surrendered the Pensacola Navy Yard. Lieutenant Slemmer, of the army, with a little garrison of forty-six men, held Fort Barrancas. Finding he could not defend his post, nor Fort McRee, also on the mainland, he, with a loyal courage which will ever render his name illustrious, repeated the strategy of Anderson, and moved his slender command, augmented by thirty ordinary seamen from the navy yard, on the morning of January 10th, to Fort Pickens, a large and more defensible work standing at the harbor entrance, on the western end of Santa Rosa Island. The Government hurriedly sent a few ships of war to assist him, while the rebels began gathering an army to assault the fort. Under cover of the Hayne negotiation, Senator Mallory managed to draw the President into an agreement, embodied in formal orders dated January 29th, that Fort Pickens should not be reinforced unless it were assaulted by the rebels, or preparations were made to do so.

The Hayne business disposed of, there was once more a little flurry of war consultations at the Executive Mansion to devise and dispatch a new expedition to reinforce Sumter. This time a few small vessels belonging to the Coast Survey were to be assembled and placed under command of Captain Ward, of the navy, for that purpose; the details of the plan do not appear to have transpired. But the President's energetic moods were lamentably short; by the 23d of February this scheme, also, was definitely abandoned, probably for the overruling reason that but nine days remained of Mr. Buchanan's presidential term.