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| Old Custom House in Charleston. |
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Official notes now began to pass between Sumter and surrounding points.
On the afternoon of the 27th, as we have observed, Governor Pickens sent a message to Anderson, requiring him to leave Sumter and return to Moultrie.
That commander refused.
On the following morning, Anderson sent his post-adjutant to Fort Moultrie, to inquire of the commander there by what authority he and armed men were in that fortification of the United States.
He replied, “By the authority of the Sovereign State of South Carolina, and by command of her government.”
Anderson's refusal caused Pickens to treat him as a public enemy within the domain of South Carolina; and the Charleston Mercury, with the peculiar logic characteristic of the class it represented, declared that the “holding of Fort Sumter by United States troops was an invasion of South Carolina.”
In a letter written to Adjutant-General Cooper, on the 28th, Anderson said:--“I shall regret very deeply the persistence of the Governor in the course he has taken.
He knows how entirely the city of Charleston is in my power.
I can cut his communication off from the sea, and thereby prevent the reception of supplies, and close the harbor, even at night, by destroying the light-houses.
These things, of course, I would never do, unless compelled to do so in self-defense.”
On the same day, the authorities of South Carolina seized and appropriated to the uses of the State the Custom House, and the Post-office kept within its walls.
That building, fronting on Broad Street, was venerated as the theater of many events connected with the old war for Independence.1
From that time until the close of President Buchanan's administration, and even longer, Major Anderson was compelled, by Government policy, to see the insurgents gather by thousands in and around Charleston, erect fortifications within reach of his guns, and
make every needful preparation for the destruction of Fort Sumter and its little garrison, without being allowed to fire a shot.
Looking back from our present stand-point, we perceive in this forbearance either the consummate wisdom of man or the direct interposition of God.
1 In the basement of the Custom House, Colonel Moultrie and other patriots concealed from the eyes of British officials, in 1775, nearly one hundred thousand pounds of “provincial powder.” Its vaults were military prisons, and there hundreds of patriots suffered long and hopelessly, and scores perished of wounds and privations, while the British held possession of the city, from May, 1780, until the close of the war. From that building Isaac Hayne, the martyr, was taken out to execution, having been brought up from a damp vault for the purpose. This building originally fronted the sea; but, in the course of time, stately warehouses arose between it and the water.
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