l of the President to
recognize our right to secede, by attempting to interfere with
our exports or imports, or by refusal to surrender the forts and
arsenals in our limits. I have found great difficulty in
restraining the people of Charleston from seizing the forts, and
have only been able to restrain them by the assurance that no
additional troops would be sent to the forts, or any munitions of
war.... If President Buchanan takes a course different from the
one indicated and sends on a reenforcement, the responsibility
will rest on him of lighting the torch of discord, which will
only be quenched in blood.

[Sidenote] Trescott's Narrative, Crawford, pp. 34 (line 16) and 42
(lines 13-16).

Mr. Trescott showed this letter to the President on the evening of
Sunday, December 2, and while his narrative does not mention any
expression by Mr. Buchanan of either approval or dissent, his
subsequent acts show a tacit acquiescence in Governor Gist's
propositions.

There immediately followed by the leaders in Charleston, and their
agents and spokesmen in Washington, the daily repetition of threats and
complaints (thus originated by the latter), which were continued for
nearly three and a half months. The purpose was twofold: first, by
alternately exciting the fears and hopes of the Government to induce it
to withhold reenforcement as a prudential measure of magnanimity and
conciliation; secondly, to make it a cloak to hide, as far as might be,
their own preparations for war. Had the Federal Government been in a
condition of normal health and vigor, the farce would not have been
effective for even a single day; but, with capital alarmed, with,
parties divided into factions, with three traitors in the Cabinet, and
a timid and vacillating Executive, by successive, almost imperceptible,
degrees, the farce produced a policy and the policy led to an opening
drama of civil war.

Leaving out of view anterior political doctrines and discussions, the
first false step had been taken by the Administration in its doctrine
of non-coercion, announced in the message; the second false step half
logically resulting from the first, in its refusal on the first day of
December to send Major Anderson the reenforcements he so urgently
demanded. The Charlestonians clung to the concession with a tenacity
which demonstrated their full appreciation of its value. Immediately
there began to flow in upon Mr. B