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

[224] with the Ordnance Bureau. The committee reported on this subject on the 18th February, 1861. There was no evidence before them that any of these cannon had actually been transmitted to the South. Indeed, this was not even pretended. From their report, however, it does appear that Secretary Floyd had attempted to do this on one occasion a very short time before he left the department, but that he had failed in this attempt in consequence of a countermand of his order issued by Mr. Holt, his successor in the War Department.

It requires but a few words to explain the whole transaction. Secretary Floyd, on the 20th December, 1860, without the knowledge of the President, ordered Captain (now Colonel) Maynadier, of the Ordnance Bureau, to cause the guns necessary for the armament of the forts on Ship Island and at Galveston to be sent to those places. This order was given verbally and not in the usual form. It was not recorded, and the forts were far from being prepared to receive their armaments. The whole number of guns required for both forts, according to the statement of the Engineer Department to Captain Maynadier, was one hundred and thirteen columbiads and eleven 82-pounders. When, late in December, 1860, these were about to be shipped at Pittsburg for their destination on the steamer Silver Wave, a committee of gentlemen from that city first brought the facts to the notice of President Buchanan The consequence was, that, in the language of the report of the committee: ‘Before the order of the late Secretary of War [Floyd] had been fully executed by the actual shipment of said guns from Pittsburg, it was countermanded by the present Secretary.’ This prompt proceeding elicited a vote of thanks, on the 4th January, 1861, from the Select and Common Councils of that city, ‘to the President, the Attorney-General [Black], and the acting Secretary of War [Holt].’

It is of this transaction, so clearly explained by the committee in February, 1861, that General Scott, so long after as the 8th November, 1862, speaks in the language which we again quote: ‘Accidentally learning, early in March, that under this posthumous order [of Secretary Floyd] the shipment of these guns had commenced, I communicated the fact to Secretary ’