Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[149] was willing to lay before Congress any proposition they might make. To recognize their State as a foreign power would be usurpation on his part; he should refer the whole matter of negotiation to Congress. He denied ever having made any agreement with the Congressional delegates from South Carolina concerning the withholding of re-enforcements from the Charleston forts, or any pledge to do so;¹ but declared that it had been his intention, all along, not to re-enforce them, and thus bring on a collision, until they should be attacked, or until there was evidence that they were about to be attacked. “This,” he said, “is the whole foundation of the alleged pledge.” He then referred them to the instructions to Major Anderson, already noticed,² in which that officer was authorized to occupy any one of the forts with his small force in case of an attack, and to take similar steps when he should “have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.” He also referred to the fact that the South Carolinians had already committed an act of war by seizing two forts belonging to the National Government in Charleston harbor, and had flung out the Palmetto flag over them, in place of the old standard of the Union. “It is under all these circumstances,” he said, with evident indignation, “that I am urged immediately to withdraw the troops from the harbor of Charleston, and am informed that without this negotiation is impossible. This I cannot do; this I will not do. Such an idea was never thought of by me in any possible contingency.” He informed them that he had just heard of the capture of the Arsenal at Charleston and half a million of dollars' worth of property by the insurgents, and said,--“Comment is needless;” and then gave them to understand that he considered it his duty to defend Fort Sumter, as a portion of the public property of the United States. He concluded with expressing “great personal regard” for the “Commissioners.”

Two days later,

January 1, 1861.

the “Commissioners” replied to this note in a long and extremely insolent and insulting letter. As representatives of a “sovereign power,” they said, they “had felt no special solicitude” as to the character in which the President might receive them, and they had no reason to thank him for permitting them to have their propositions laid before Congress. They then referred to the declarations in his Message, that he had no right, and would not attempt, “to coerce a seceding State,” and pointed to his subsequent acts, as virtual pledges that such were his honest convictions of duty. “Some weeks ago,” they said, “the State of South Carolina declared her intention, in the existing condition ”