I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
G. T. BEAUREGARD, Brigadier-General Commanding.
General: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication demanding the evacuation of this fort, and to say, in reply thereto, that it is a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligations to my government, prevent my compliance. Thanking you for the fair, manly and courteous terms proposed, and for the high compliment paid me,
I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
ROBERT ANDERSON, Major, First Artillery, Commanding.
Major Anderson, while conversing with the messengers of General Beauregard, having remarked that he would soon be starved into a surrender of the fort, or words to that effect, General Beauregard was induced to address him a second letter, in which he proposed that the major should fix a time at which he would agree to evacuate, and agree also not to use his guns against the Confederate forces unless they fired upon him, and so doing, he, General Beauregard, would abstain from hostilities. To this second letter Major Anderson replied, naming noon on the 15th, provided that no hostile act was committed by the Confederate forces, or any part of them, and provided, further, that he should not, meanwhile, receive from the government at Washington controlling instructions or additional supplies.
The fleet which was to reinforce and supply him was then collecting outside the bar, and General Beauregard at once notified him, at 3:20 a. m. on the morning of the 12th of April, that he would open fire on the fort in one hour from that time.
The shell which opened the momentous bombardment of Fort Sumter was fired from a mortar, located at Fort Johnson on James island, at 4:30 on the morning of the 12th.
For over three months the troops stationed on the islands surrounding Fort Sumter had been constantly employed building batteries, mounting guns, and making every preparation for the defense of the harbor, and, if necessary, for an attack on the fort if the government at Washington persisted in its refusal to order its evacuation. Lieut.-Col. R. S. Ripley, an able and energetic soldier, commanded the artillery on Sullivan's island, with his headquarters at Fort Moultrie, Brigadier-General Dunovant commanding the island. Under Ripley's direction, six 10-inch mortars and twenty guns bore on Sumter. The guns were 24, 32 and 42 pounders, 8-inch columbiads and one 9-inch Dahlgren. The supports to the batteries were the First regiment of rifles, Colonel Pettigrew; the regiment of infantry, South Carolina regulars, Col. Richard Anderson; the Charleston Light Dragoons, Capt. B. H. Rutledge, and the German Flying Artillery, the latter attached to Col. Pettigrew's command, stationed at the east end of the island. These commands, with Ripley's battalion of South Carolina regular artillery and Capt. Robert Martin's mortar battery on Mount Pleasant, made up the force under General Dunovant.