ty was quartered in Castle
Pinckney as quietly as possible, in order not to irritate the sensitive
Charlestonians, and the officers and overseers in the two forts were
instructed to sound and test the loyalty and trustworthiness of the
mechanics and laborers. Those in Sumter had been brought from
Baltimore, and in them Captain Foster placed his greatest hopes; but
they disappointed him. On December 3 his overseer informed him that
while they professed a willingness to resist a mob, they were
disinclined to fight any organized volunteer force, and he was
reluctantly compelled to abandon the scheme, at least as to Fort
Sumter. But he still clung to the hope that the thirty men sent to
Castle Pinckney, having been chosen with more care, might prove of some
service in the hour of need. He gave orders to his officers to resist
to the utmost any demands or attempts on the works, "Having done thus
much," he wrote to the department, "which is all I can do in this
respect, I feel that I have done my duty, and that if any overt act
takes place, no blame can properly attach to me. I regret, however,
that sufficient soldiers are not in this harbor to garrison these two
works. The Government will soon have to decide the question whether to
maintain them or to give them up to South Carolina. If it be decided to
maintain them, troops must instantly be sent and in large numbers."

Though neither Major Anderson nor Captain Foster could obtain any
official replies to distinct and vital questions involving the issue of
peace or war, a trivial episode soon furnished them a very broad hint
as to what the Secretary of War would ultimately do about the forts.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 20, 1860. W.R. Vol. I., p. 100.

On the same day on which, the South Carolina secession convention met
at Columbia, the State capital, Captain Foster had occasion to go to
the United States arsenal in the city of Charleston to procure some
machinery used in mounting heavy guns. While there he remembered that
two ordnance sergeants, respectively in charge of Fort Sumter and
Castle Pinckney, had applied to him for the arms to which they were by
regulations entitled. He therefore asked the military storekeeper in
charge of the arsenal for two muskets and accouterments for those two
sergeants. The storekeeper replied that he had no authority for the
issue of two muskets for this purpose, but that the old order for forty
muskets was on file, and the muskets and acc