Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/213

Rh The abandoned fort was therefore promptly occupied by South Carolina troops, and the State also seized such other property as could be taken without bloodshed.

Nearly coincident with this movement of Major Anderson occurred the purchase and equipping of vessels in the New York harbor to carry reinforcements of supplies and troops to Fort Sumter. Gen. Winfield Scott, the commander-in-chief of the United States army, who had constantly insisted on coercive military measures, again urged President Buchanan, on the joth of December, to send 250 recruits from New York harbor, with extra muskets or rifles, ammunition and subsistence stores to reinforce the fort which Major Anderson now held. The President promptly ordered the reinforcements. The secretaries of war and the navy were immediately instructed, the appropriate orders to army and navy officers were issued, and on the 3ist day of December, 1860, the measures for an armed reinforcement of Fort Sumter were fully adopted and carried into immediate operation. A few days' delay unexpectedly ensued, but as quickly as possible, January 5, 1861, the steamer Star of the West left New York for Charleston on a warlike mission with 250 troops and six months' provisions, and was followed two days later by the warship Brooklyn, Captain Farragut commanding.

The expedition of the Star of the West failed, notwithstanding its well-devised plans, nearly as the circumstances of the failure are related by Lieutenant Woods, Ninth United States infantry, commanding the recruits on board. His report shows that on arrival near his destination he steamed up the main channel in Charleston harbor, and was within 1¾ miles of Fort Sumter, with his troops hidden from view, when his vessel was fired upon from Morris island. The Star of the West kept on under the fire of the South Carolina battery, but finding it impossible to take the supplies and his command of infantry into Fort Sumter, Lieutenant