[Illustration: SERGEANT HART NAILING THE COLORS TO THE FLAG-STAFF, FORT SUMTER]
Intense excitement in Charleston was the natural outcome of Anderson’s action, and the morning of the 27th the governor sent his aide-de-camp, Colonel Pettigrew, accompanied by Major Capers, with a peremptory demand that Anderson should return with his garrison to Moultrie, to which Anderson replied, “Make my compliments to the governor and say to him that I decline to accede to his request; I cannot and will not go back.” The governor’s messenger mentioned that when Governor Pickens came into office he found an understanding between his predecessor (Gist) and the President, by which the status in the harbor was to remain unchanged. Anderson stated “that he knew nothing of it; that he could get no information or positive orders from Washington; ... that he had reason to believe that [the state troops] meant to land and attack him from the north; that the desire of the governor to have the matter settled peaceably and without bloodshed was precisely his own object in transferring his command; ... that he did it upon his own responsibility alone,” as safety required it, “and as he had the right to do.” He added that, “In this controversy between the North and the South, my sympathies are entirely with the South,” but that a sense of duty to his trust was first.[170] The immediate result was the occupancy by the state forces, December 27th, of Pinckney and Moultrie; the seizure, December 30th, of the unoccupied barracks known as Fort Johnson, and of the arsenal, with its ordnance and ordnance stores, valued at four hundred thousand dollars.
The news of Anderson’s dramatic, bold, and self-reliant act, one for which the country owes a debt to the memory of this upright and excellent commander, brought consternation to the President and Secretary of War, who learned it through the indefatigable Trescot, who had, on the 26th, arranged for the three commissioners of South Carolina an interview with the President for December 27th, at one o’clock. The news of the morning brought a complete change of circumstances. A telegram to Wigfall was brought by him to the commissioners and to the Secretary of War, who at once went to the commissioners. Trescot was present, and could not believe in an “act not only without orders but in the face of orders.” Floyd at once telegraphed, asking an explanation of the report. “It is not believed, because there is no order for any such movement.” A telegram in reply from Anderson assured him of the truth, and a written report gave as reasons that “many things convinced me that the authorities of the state designed to proceed to a hostile act. Under this impression I could not hesitate that it was my solemn duty to move my command from a fort which we could not have held probably longer than forty-eight or sixty hours to this one where my power of resistance is increased to a very great degree.”[171]