Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/420

382 military movement of a hostile intent, so construed by South Carolina, and in that light was consented to by the United States. The secret proposition of the commanding general of the United States armies, General Scott, made in December after South Carolina became a government de facto, and which was acted upon by President Buchanan with the intention to throw troops, arms, ammunition and supplies into Fort Sumter, was itself an official institution of belligerency; and the passing of the &quot;Star of the West&quot; from the high seas into the bay of Charleston with these troops and war stores aboard, and within range of the batteries of South Carolina, with actual professed intention to effect a landing at the fort, was open war made manifest by the act.

It will be observed that no forts or other property formerly belonging to the United States were taken in the possession of the seceding States until after the concentration of Maj. Anderson s command at Fort Sumter, and after the information of the preparations made by General Scott for coercion by way of the sea had reached the authorities of these Southern States. The ordinance of secession being wholly civil was in no sense a manifesto of war, whether it was legal or illegal. If illegal, it was void, without force and irrecognizable by any court or nation until some act of war was committed. If legal, then any armed resistance to its proper operation conditioned hostilities. South Carolina did not interfere in any respect with the exercise by the Federal government of any of its functions until after the people of the State had by the formal act of their convention withdrawn from the Union and declared to the world the independent nationality of their State. Nor did the State take possession of the forts in its harbor until they were abandoned in a hostile manner, and even then a commission was sent to Washington by South Carolina prepared to negotiate all questions between the two Governments. No blood was shed, no violence done, no force