Alabama passed an Army Act authorizing the enlistment of one
hundred thousand men for one year's service. Nine days later
again, having adopted a Constitution in the meantime, this
Congress passed a Navy Act, authorizing the purchase or
construction of ten little gunboats.

In April the main storm center went whirling back to Charleston,
where Sherman's old friend Beauregard commanded the forces that
encircled Sumter. Sumter, still unfinished, had been designed for
a garrison of six hundred and fifty combatant men. It now
contained exactly sixty-five. It was to have been provisioned for
six months. The actual supplies could not be made to last beyond
two weeks. Both sides knew that Anderson's gallant little
garrison must be starved out by the fifteenth. But the excited
Carolinians would not wait, because they feared that the arrival
of reinforcements might balk them of their easy prey. On the
eleventh Beauregard, acting under orders from the Confederate
Government, sent in a summons to surrender. Anderson refused. At
a quarter to one the next morning the summons was repeated, as
pilots had meanwhile reported a Federal vessel approaching the
harbor. Anderson again refused and again admitted that he would
be starved out on the fifteenth. Thereupon Beauregard's aides
declared immediate surrender the only possible alternative to a
bombardment and signed a note at 3:20 A.M. giving Anderson formal
warning that fire would be opened in an hour.

Fort Sumter stood about half a mile inside the harbor mouth,
fully exposed to the converging fire of four relatively powerful
batteries, three about a mile away, the fourth nearly twice as
far. At the northern side of the harbor mouth stood Fort