Union; and its commandant, Major Robert Anderson, though born in
the slave-owning State of Kentucky, was determined to fight.

The situation, here as elsewhere, was complicated by Floyd,
President Buchanan's Secretary of War, soon to be forced out of
office on a charge of misapplying public funds. Floyd, as an
ardent Southerner, was using the last lax days of the Buchanan
Government to get the army posts ready for capitulation whenever
secession should have become an accomplished fact. He urged on
construction, repairs, and armament at Charleston, while refusing
to strengthen the garrison, in order, as he said, not to provoke
Carolina. Moreover, in November he had replaced old Colonel
Gardner, a Northern veteran of "1812," by Anderson the
Southerner, in whom he hoped to find a good capitulator. But this
time Floyd was wrong.

The day after Christmas Anderson's little garrison at Fort
Moultrie slipped over to Fort Sumter under cover of the dark,
quietly removed Floyd's workmen, who were mostly Baltimore
Secessionists, and began to prepare for. defense. Next morning
Charleston was furious and began to prepare for attack. The South
Carolina authorities at once took formal possession of Pinckney
and Moultrie; and three days later seized the United States
Arsenal in Charleston itself. Ten days later again, on January 9,
1861, the Star of the West, a merchant vessel coming in with
reinforcements and supplies for Anderson, was fired on and forced
to turn back. Anderson, who had expected a man-of-war, would not
fire in her defense, partly because he still hoped there might
yet be peace.