Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/379

Rh with any degree of safety to the command by the concurrence of the South Carolina authorities. He does not state that he knew of this movement on the morning of the 27th and that he could have sent instructions to Anderson by telegram within an hour. His hesitation throughout the days of the 27th and the 28th and even to the 31st, which is the date of his reply, to take the step dictated by the promptings of his best judgment, put him and his government in the wrong, and justified Carolina in the general belief that the plighted faith of the United States had been violated. On the 27th the South Carolina flag was raised over Pinckney and on the night of the 27th South Carolina troops occupied, without firing a gun, the abandoned Moultrie. The State was at that time claiming to be an independent republic entitled to occupy all the forts within its territory. It was peacefully waiting for them to be evacuated. It had kept its plighted word to the United States government. There appeared to be no other course to pursue except the occupation of the deserted fort. Buchanan complains that the State without waiting for or asking for any explanations and doubtless believing that the officer had acted not only without but against the President's orders, on the very next day after the night when the removal was made, seized by a military force two of the three Federal forts in the harbor of Charleston and covered them under their own flag instead of that of the United States. The State of South Carolina and the South generally construed this movement of Maj. Anderson as an act of war, a hostile maneuvre, authorized by his own understanding of the real intentions of his government. Anderson desired to avoid bloodshed by an act in itself hostile but which would deter the Carolinians from making an attack. He gave up two forts to make himself strong in the third and by doing so committed the act of war. The citizens of a peaceful town can be so invested by guns as to force a surrender without bloodshed and