His Excellency F. W. PICKENS, Governor, &c.:
SIR: Your letter of the 27th ultimo addressed to the President has been referred by him to this Department for reply.
In controlling the military operations in the harbor of Charleston the President directs me to say that everything will be done that may be due to the honor and rights of South Carolina.
The President shares the feeling expressed by you that Fort Sumter should be in our possession at the earliest moment possible. But this feeling, natural and just as it is admitted to be, must yield to the necessity of the case. Thorough preparation must be made before an attack is attempted, for the first blow must be successful, both for its moral and physical consequences, or otherwise the result might be disastrous to your State in the loss of many of those whom we can least afford to spare. A failure would demoralize our people and injuriously affect us in the opinion of the world as reckless and precipitate.
Entertaining these opinions, the President directs me to say that he is engaged assiduously in pressing forward measures to effect results in which all are interested. Under the fourth section of an act of Congress to raise Provisional Forces for the Confederate States of America, and for other purposes, a copy of which I have the honor to inclose in another communication of this date, the President has appointed Peter G. T. Beauregard brigadier-general to command the Provisional Forces of this Government in the harbor of Charleston. General Beauregard will be accompanied by an adjutant, whose duty it will be to receive into the Provisional Army, with their officers, under the provisions of the act aforesaid, the forces of your State now in Charleston.
General Beauregard has the entire confidence of the President and of this Department, and I beg to commend him as possessing every soldierly quality.
I have the honor to be, with high regard, your obedient servant,
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. 259-60
