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

[365] work should remain comparatively empty and absolutely weak, and so be made an easy prey through treachery or assault. Thus for more than two months re-enforcements were kept out of Fort Pickens while the rebellion was gaining head, although the armistice really ended with the closing of the Peace Convention, and its failure to effect a reconciliation.

When the new Administration came into power, on the 4th of March, a new line of policy was adopted, more consistent with the National dignity, but not less cautious. Informed that the insurgents were greatly augmented in numbers near Pensacola, and were mounting guns in Fort McRee, and constructing new batteries near, all to bear heavily on Fort Pickens, General Scott again advised the Government to send re-enforcements and supplies to the garrison of that post. The Government acted upon his advice, and by its directions on the same day

March 12, 1861.

the General-in-Chief dispatched a note to Captain Vogdes of the Brooklyn, saying:--“At the first favorable moment you will land with your company, re-enforce Fort Pickens, and hold the same till further orders.” It was unsafe to send such orders by mail or telegraph, for the insurgents controlled Both in the Gulf States, and this was sent from New York, in duplicate, by two naval vessels. From that time unusual activity was observed in the Navy Yard at Brooklyn; also on Governor's Island and at Fort Hamilton, at the entrance to the harbor of New York. There was activity, too, in the arsenals of the North, for, while the Government wished for peace, it could scarcely indulge a hope that the wish would be gratified.

With the order for the fitting out of an expedition for the relief of Fort Sumter was issued a similar order in relation to Fort Pickens. Supplies and munitions for this purpose had been prepared in ample quantity, in a manner to excite the least attention, and between the 6th and 9th of April the chartered steamers Atlantic and Illinois and the steam frigate Powhatan departed from New York for the Gulf of Mexico with troops and supplies.¹ In the mean time the Government had dispatched Lieutenant John L. Worden of the Navy (the gallant commander of the first Monitor, which encountered the Merrimack in Hampton Roads), with an order to Captain Adams, of the Sabine, then in command of the little squadron off Fort Pickens,² to throw re-enforcements into that work at once. The previous order of General Scott to Captain Vogdes had not been executed, for Captain Adams believed that the armistice was yet in force. Colonel Braxton Bragg, the artillery officer in the battle of Buena Vista, in Mexico, to whom, it is said, General Taylor coolly gave the order, in the midst of the fight--“a little more grape, Captain Bragg” --was now in command of all the insurgent forces at and near Pensacola, with the commission of brigadiergeneral; and Captain Duncan N. Ingraham, of the United States Navy (who behaved so well in the harbor of Smyrna, a few years before, in defending the rights of American citizens, in the case of the Hungarian, Martin Kostza), had charge of the Navy Yard at Warrington. On the day of Lieutenant Worden's arrival there, Captain Adams had dined with these faithless men, and had returned to his ship.