Major Robert Anderson: December 14, 1860*

When I inform you that my garrison consists of only sixty effective men, that we are in a very indefensible work, the walls of which are only about fourteen feet high, and that we have within 100 yards of our walls, sand-hills which command our work, and which afford admirable sites for their batteries and the finest covers for sharpshooters, and that besides this there are numerous houses, some; of them within pistol-shot — you will at once see that if attacked in force, headed by any one not a simpleton, there is scarcely a probability of our being able to hold out long enough to enable our friends to come to our succor.

Trusting that, etc.,

(Signed.)

Robert Anderson.

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* From the Richmond Whig, December 24, 1860.

SOURCE: Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 100