essary preparation.

Contemporaneously with this there was also undertaken another enterprise
for the relief of Fort Pickens at Pensacola. It was, however, kept so
strictly secret that the President did not even communicate it to Mr.
Welles. Apparently his only reason for such extreme reticence lay in the
proverb: "If you wish your secret kept, keep it." But proverbial wisdom
had an unfortunate result upon this occasion. Both the President and Mr.
Welles set the eye of desire upon the warship Powhatan, lying in New
York harbor. The secretary designed her for the Sumter fleet; the
President meant to send her to Pensacola. Of the Sumter expedition she
was an absolutely essential part; for the Pensacola plan she was not
altogether indispensable.

On April 6 Captain Mercer, on board the Powhatan as his flagship, and on
the very point of weighing anchor to sail in command of the Sumter
reinforcement, under orders from Secretary Welles, was astounded to find
himself dispossessed and superseded by Lieutenant Porter, who suddenly
came upon the deck bringing an order signed by the President himself. A
few hours later, at Washington, a telegram startled Mr. Welles with the
news. Utterly confounded, he hastened, in the early night-time, to the
White House, and obtained an audience of the President. Then Mr. Lincoln
learned what a disastrous blunder he had made; greatly mortified, he
requested Mr. Seward to telegraph with all haste to New York that the
Powhatan must be immediately restored to Mercer for Sumter. Lieutenant
Porter was already far down the bay, when he was overtaken by a swift
tug bringing this message. But unfortunately Mr. Seward had so phrased
the dispatch that it did not purport to convey an order either from the
President or the secretary of the navy, and he had signed his own name:
"Give up the Powhatan to Mercer. SEWARD." To Porter, hurriedly
considering this unintelligible occurrence, it seemed better to go
forward under the President's order than to obey the order of an
official who had no apparent authority to command him. So he steamed on
for Pensacola.

On April 8, discharging the obligation of warning, Mr. Lincoln notified
General Beauregard that an attempt would be made to put provisions into
Sumter, but not at present to put in men, arms, or ammunition, unless
the fort should be attacked. Thereupon Beauregard, at two o'clock P.M.
on April 11, sent to Anderson a request for a surrender. Anderson
refus