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| Washington Light Infantry. |
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| Palmetto Guard. |
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unwilling to have his earnest pleading go to the ears of General Scott, to whom it was the duty of all subordinate officers to report.
Notwithstanding the apathy, as it seemed, at Washington, and the assurances sent from there that there was no danger, so long as he acted prudently, Major Anderson continued to urge the necessity of re-enforcements.
He was convinced that every able-bodied man in South Carolina would be called into the military service of the State, if necessary, for the seizure of the forts.
He knew that there were nightly military drills in Charleston; and he was positively assured that the South Carolinians regarded the forts as their property.
He saw whole columns of the Charleston journals made pictorial
by the insignias of various military companies attached to orders for meetings, day after day, such as the “Washington Light Artillery,” the “Palmetto Guard,” the “Carolina Light Infantry,” the “Moultrie Guards,” the “Marion Artillery,” the “Charleston riflemen,” the “Meagher Guard” of Irishmen, and the “German riflemen.”
1 He read the general orders of R. G. M. Dunovant, the Adjutant and Inspector-General of the State, requiring colonels commanding regiments to “report forth — with the number, kind, and condition of all public arms in possession of the Volunteer Corps composing the several commands,” and the appointment of nine aides-de-camp to Governor Pickens.
These were signs of approaching hostilities that the dullest mind might
comprehend; and, in addition, Anderson had the frank avowals of men in power.
Floyd had summoned Colonel Huger, of Charleston, to Washington, for the real purpose, no doubt, of arranging more perfect plans for the seizure of the forts, for that officer was afterward an active general in the military service of the conspirators.
Anderson was directed by the Secretary to confer with Huger before his departure, and in that interview the Colonel, the Mayor
1 More than a column of the Mercury of December 21, now before the writer, was filled with these notices and devices. A few of the latter are given on this and the next page, as mementoes of the time. The “Washington Light Infantry” was an old company, and bore the Eutaw flag of the Revolution. The “Charleston riflemen” was an old company, organized in 1806. The insignia of the Marion Artillery was a copy of White's picture of Marion dining the British officer. That of the “Meagher Guard” appears to have been made for the occasion — a rude wood-cut, with the words Independence or Death. The title of this company was given in honor of the Irish exile, Thomas F. Meagher, whose honorable course, in serving his adopted country gallantly as a brigadier-general during the civil war that followed, was a fitting rebuke to these unworthy sons of Ireland, who had fled from oppression, and were now ready to fight for an ignoble oligarchy, who were enemies of human freedom and enlightenment. So were the Germans of South Carolina rebuked by Sigel and thousands of their countrymen, who fought in the National armies for those democratic principles which for years had burned intensely in the bosoms of their countrymen in Father-land.
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