- 23 Nov 2018 14:49
#14965943
November 23, Friday
Major General Robert Anderson, newly in command at Fort Moultrie on the edge of Charleston Harbor, reports that when the outworks are completed, the fort, appropriately garrisoned, would be capable of “making a very handsome defense.” But the present garrison is so weak as to invite attack, which is being “openly and publicly threatened.” If besieged, they can not hold out for long. Fort Sumter, ungarrisoned, on a shoal in the harbor, is incomplete but work is proceeding on mounting of guns and he says it “is the key to the entrance of this harbor.” He favors garrisoning Fort Sumter at once, as he does Castle Pinckney, which commands the city of Charleston. Anderson is trying to avoid a clash but says, “Nothing, however, will be better calculated to prevent bloodshed than our being found in such an attitude that it would be madness and folly to attack us.” Anderson reports a settled determination in Charleston to leave the Union. “The clouds are threatening, and the storm may break upon us at any moment.” He repeats his call for reinforcements. (He is to repeat this request often.)
The forts have been left in a state of general stagnation. Sand dunes have piled up around Fort Moultrie so that cows could walk right in. Fort Sumter, begun in 1829, remains incomplete. Castle Pinckney is small and near the city, occupied by just an ordnance sergeant and his family. After all, the whole Federal Army numbers a little over sixteen thousand men, mostly on the western frontier.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke