hole South had been well supplied with military stores by the
enterprising foresight of J. B. Floyd, of Virginia, Buchanan's Secretary
of War, who had sent thither 115,000 muskets from the Springfield
arsenal alone.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Major Robert Anderson.

Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, was held by Major Robert Anderson,
of Kentucky, with a garrison of some seventy men. On December 27th the
whole country was thrilled, and the South enraged, by the news that on
the previous night Anderson had secretly transferred his whole force to
Fort Sumter, a new and stronger work in the centre of the harbor,
leaving spiked cannon and burning gun-carriages behind him at Moultrie.
The South Carolina militia at once occupied the deserted fortress with
the other harbor fortifications, and began to put them into a state of
defence. At Pensacola, Fla., Lieutenant Slemmer, by a movement similar
to Anderson's, held Fort Pickens.

[Illustration: Several soldiers loading boats by moonlight.]
Major Anderson removing his Forces from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter,
December 26, 1861.

The seizure of government property went on through January and February.
In Louisiana all the commissary stores were confiscated, and the revenue
cutter McClelland surrendered. The mint at New Orleans, containing over
half a million in gold and silver, was seized. More than half of the
regular army were stationed in Texas, under General Twiggs. In February,
at the demand of a secessionist committee of public safety, he
surrendered his entire force, together with eighteen military posts. The
troops were sent to a Gulf port and there detained.

This wholesale seizure of government property, worth some $20,000,000,
has brought down upon the South much scathing rebuke. The conduct of
Floyd, stabbing his country under the cloak of a cabinet office, cannot
be too strongly condemned; but with the seceding States the case was
different. Having (so they thought) established themselves as
independent republics, they could not allow the military works within
their borders to remain in the hands of a foreign power. As to the
Government's property right, they recognized it, and proposed to pay
damages. The provisional constitution of the Confederacy, adopted in
February, provided for negotiations to settle the claim of the United
States.

The southern leaders were not more anxious to get the slave States out
of the Union than to get them into a gra