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

[363] stratagem was necessary; so the Mohawk, which had been lingering near Key West, weighed anchor and departed, professedly on a cruise in search of slave-ships. This was to lull into slumber the vigilance of the secessionists, who were uneasy and wide awake when the Mohawk was there. She went to Havana on the 16th,

November, 1860.

where her officers boarded two of the steamers of lines connecting Key West with both New Orleans and Charleston, and requested to be reported as “after slavers.” . As soon as they were gone she weighed anchor, and on Sunday morning, the 18th, returned to Key West. The Wyandotte, Captain Stanley, was there, and had taken position so that her battery would command the bridge that connected Fort Taylor with the island.

While the inhabitants of Key West were in the churches, Captain Brannan quietly marched his company by a back path, crossed the bridge, and took possession of the fort. He had sent munitions and stores by water. The two forts were immediately put in a state of defense, and they and the port of Key West were irretrievably lost to the insurgents.

The Administration did not like these performances of loyal commanders, because they were “irritating” to the secessionists; and Captain Craven received peremptory orders from the Navy Department to go on a cruise. He lingered around the Keys, believing that his services would be needed near those important forts that guarded the northern entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. He was not mistaken. The presence of his vessel admonished the secessionists to be cautious. At length, on the 18th of January, the day on which the insurgents at Pensacola demanded, a second time, the surrender of Fort Pickens,¹ the steamer Galveston, from New Orleans, bearing a military force for the purpose of capturing the forts near Key West, appeared in sight. At the same time the United States transport Joseph Whitney was there; and a company of artillery, under Major Arnold, was disembarking from her at Fort Jefferson, then in command of Captain Meigs. This apparition caused the Galveston to put about and disappear. Forts Taylor and Jefferson were now in a condition to resist the attacks of ten thousand men. Various plans of the secessionists to capture these forts were partially executed, but no serious attack was ever attempted afterward.²

Let us now consider the siege of Fort Pickens.

From the 18th of January, on which day Colonel Chase, the commander of the insurgents near Pensacola, demanded the surrender of Fort Pickens, and was refused,³ Lieutenant Slemmer and his little garrison, like Anderson and his men in Fort Sumter, worked faithfully, in the midst of hourly perils, to strengthen the fort. Like the dwellers in Fort Sumter, they were compelled to be non-resistant while seeing formidable preparations for their destruction. The country, meanwhile, was in a state of feverish anxiety, and loyal men at the seat of Government, like Judge Holt, the Secretary of War, and General Scott, strongly urged the propriety of re-enforcing and supplying that fort. The President was averse to any “initiatory” movement