promise not to reinforce the garrisons of the National Forts, under
Major Anderson, in Charleston harbor, retired from the Cabinet December
12th--Howell Cobb having already, "because his duty to Georgia required
it," resigned the Secretaryship of the Treasury, and left it bankrupt
and the credit of the Nation almost utterly destroyed.

On the 26th of December, Major Anderson evacuated Fort Moultrie,
removing all his troops and munitions of war to Fort Sumter--whereupon a
cry went up from Charleston that this was in violation of the
President's promise to take no step looking to hostilities, provided the
Secessionists committed no overt act of Rebellion, up to the close of
his fast expiring Administration. On the 29th, John B. Floyd, Secretary
of War, having failed to secure the consent of the Administration to an
entire withdrawal of the Federal garrison from the harbor of Charleston,
also resigned, and the next day--he having in the meantime escaped in
safety to Virginia--was indicted by the Grand Jury at Washington, for
malfeasance and conspiracy to defraud the Government in the theft of
$870,000 of Indian Trust Bonds from the Interior Department, and the
substitution therefor of Floyd's acceptances of worthless
army-transportation drafts on the Treasury Department.

Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, also resigned, January 8th,
1861, on the pretext that "additional troops, he had heard, have been
ordered to Charleston" in the "Star of the West."--[McPherson's History
of the Rebellion, p. 28.]

Several changes were thus necessitated in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, by
these and other resignations, so that by the 18th of January, 1861,
Jeremiah S. Black was Secretary of State; General John A. Dix, Secretary
of the Treasury; Joseph Holt, Secretary of War; Edwin M. Stanton,