War Department,
January 10, 1861.
Major Robert
Anderson,
First Artillery, Commanding at Fort Sumter, S. C.:
sir: Your
dispatches to No. 16, inclusive, have been received. Before the receipt of that
of 31st December,* announcing that the Government might re-enforce you at its
leisure, and that you regarded yourself safe in your present position, some two
hundred and fifty instructed recruits had been ordered to proceed from
Governor's Island to Fort Sumter on the Star of the West, for the
purpose of strengthening the force under your command. The probability is, from
the current rumors of to-day, that this vessel has been fired into by the South
Carolinians, and has not been able to reach you. To meet all contingencies, the
Brooklyn has been dispatched, with instructions not to cross the bar at
the harbor of Charleston, but to afford to the Star of the West and
those on board all the assistance they may need, and in the event the recruits
have not effected a landing at Fort Sumter they will return to Fort Monroe.
I avail myself of the occasion to express the great
satisfaction of the Government at the forbearance, discretion and firmness with
which you have acted, amid the perplexing and difficult circumstances in which
you have been placed. You will continue, as heretofore, to act strictly on the
defensive; to avoid, by all means compatible with the safety of your command, a
collision with the hostile forces by which you are surrounded. But for the
movement, so promptly and brilliantly executed, by which you transferred your
forces to Fort Sumter, the probability is that ere this the defenselessness of
your position would have invited an attack, which, there is reason to believe,
was contemplated, if not in active preparation, which must have led to the
effusion of blood, that has been thus so happily prevented. The movement,
therefore, was in every way admirable, alike for its humanity [and] patriotism,
as for its soldiership.
Very respectfully,
your obedient servant,
J. Holt,
Secretary of War ad
interim.
_______________
* Received
January 5, 1861.
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. 136-7; Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the
Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861, p. 177
