James Buchanan, Buchanan's administration on the eve of the rebellion

According to the report, he merely mentions in general terms the recruits he had obtained for the expedition, without allotting them among the several forts. According to the letter, he informed President Buchanan that the number of recruits at New York and Carlisle barracks was about six hundred, ‘besides the five companies of regulars near at hand, making about one thousand men.’ And he also stated how he would distribute them among the several forts. In this distribution he left only ‘about two hundred men for the twin forts of Moultrie and Sumter, Charleston harbor.’ He also declared in this letter, that ‘he considered the force quite adequate to the occasion.’ But, as if rendered conscious of its inadequacy by the logic of events, he alleges that President Buchanan ‘might have called forth volunteers to garrison these forts, without any special legislation,’ and this, too, ‘with the full approbation of every loyal man in the Union.’ That is, that on the 15th December, 1860, before any State had seceded, he might without law have usurped this authority, when the law-making power was actually in session and had made no movement to grant it, and when all were intent, not on war, but on measures of compromise. In this letter he charges the Secretary of War, ‘with or without the President's approbation,’ with ‘having nearly denuded our whole eastern seaboard of troops.’ In doing this, he must surely have forgotten that he himself-had eloquently urged that all the force on the frontiers was not sufficient for the protection of our distant fellow-citizens, and had therefore advocated the raising of an additional force by Congress for this very purpose.

It would seem from the report that the President confined his observations at their interview exclusively to the reenforcement of the forts in Charleston harbor, for which General Scott, according to his own statement, in the letter to the ‘National Intelligencer,’ could spare but two hundred men, the remaining eight hundred being required for the other fortifications. The President having expressed the opinion, according to the report, ‘that there was at the moment no danger of an early secession ’