FORT MOULTRIE, S.C.,
December 11, 1860.
Memorandum of verbal instructions to Major
Anderson, First Artillery, commanding at Fort Moultrie, S.C.
You are aware of the great anxiety of the Secretary of War
that a collision-of the troops with the people of this State shall be avoided,
and of his studied determination to pursue a course with reference to the
military force and forts in this harbor which shall guard against such a
collision. He has therefore carefully abstained from increasing the force at
this point, or taking any measures which might add to the present excited state
of the public mind, or which would throw any doubt on the confidence he feels
that South Carolina will not attempt, by violence, to obtain possession of the
public works or interfere with their occupancy. But as the counsel and acts of
rash and impulsive persons may possibly disappoint those expectations of the
Government, he deems it proper that you should be prepared with instructions to
meet so unhappy a contingency. He has therefore directed me verbally to give
you such instructions.*
You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly
tend to provoke aggression; and for that reason you are not, without evident
and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into
the assumption of a hostile attitude. But you are to hold possession of the
forts in this harbor, and if attacked you are to defend yourself to the last
extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy
more than one of the three forts, but an attack on or attempt to take
possession of any one of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you
may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to
increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar steps
whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.
D.C. BUELL,
Assistant
Adjutant-General.
_______________
* See also Floyd to Anderson, December 21, 1860, and Holt
to Anderson, February 23, 1860, post.
SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 1
(Serial No. 1), p. 89-90; Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of
the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 73; The Correspondence Between the Commissioners of the State of So. Ca. to the Government at Washington and the President of the United States, p. 8-9
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