The telegram is correct. I abandoned Fort Moultrie because I was certain
that, if attacked, my men must have been sacrificed, and the command of
the harbor lost. I spiked the guns, and destroyed the carriages, to keep
the guns from being used against us.
If attacked, the garrison would never have surrendered without a fight.
ROBERT ANDERSON,
_Major First Artillery_.
The event reached the President's ears; he was perplexed, and postponed
the promised interview with the Commissioners one day. He met them on
the 28th. He states, in his _Defence_, published in 1866, that he
informed them at once that he "could recognize them only as private
gentlemen, and not as commissioners from a sovereign State; that it was
to Congress, and to Congress alone, they must appeal." Nevertheless, he
expressed his willingness to communicate to that body, as the only
competent tribunal, any proposition they might have to offer; as if he
did not realize that this proposal was a quasi-recognition of South
Carolina's claim to independence, and a misdemeanor meriting
impeachment.
The Commissioners, strange to say, were either too stupid or too timid
to perceive the advantage of this concession. Fortunately for the
country, their indifference lost to Rebellion its only possible chance
of peaceful success.
The Commissioners evidently believed that the President was within the
control of the cabinet cabal, for they made an angry complaint against
Anderson, and imperiously demanded "explanations." For two days the
President wavered. An outside complication tended to open his eyes. On
the 31st of December Floyd resigned the portfolio of war; and, on the
same day, the President sent to the Commissioners a definite answer
that, "whatever might have been his first inclination, the Governor of
South Carolina had, since Anderson's movement, forcibly seized Fort
Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, and the Charleston arsenal, custom-house, and
post-office, and covered them with the palmetto flag; that under such
circumstances he could not, and would not, withdraw the Federal troops
from Sumter." The angry Commissioners returned home, leaving behind them
an insolent rejoinder, charging the President "with tacit consent to the
scheme of peaceable secession!"