er."

To this, Major Robert Anderson, at 2.30 A.M. of the 12th, replied "that,
cordially uniting with you in the desire to avoid the useless effusion
of blood, I will, if provided with the necessary means of
transportation, evacuate Fort Sumter by noon on the 15th inst., should I
not receive prior to that time, controlling instructions from my
Government, or additional supplies, and that I will not in the mean time
open my fire upon your forces unless compelled to do so by some hostile
act against this Fort or the flag of my Government, by the forces under
your command, or by some portion of them, or by the perpetration of some
act showing a hostile intention on your part against this Fort or the
flag it bears." Thereupon General Beauregard telegraphed Secretary
Walker: "He would not consent. I write to-day."

At 3.20 A.M., Major Anderson received from Messrs. Chesnut and Lee a
notification to this effect: "By authority of Brigadier General
Beauregard, commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States,
we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his
batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time." And a later
dispatch from General Beauregard to Secretary Walker, April 12,
laconically stated: "WE OPENED FIRE AT 4.30."

At last the hour and the minute had come, for which the Slave Power of
the South had for thirty years so impatiently longed. At last the
moment had come, when all the long-treasured vengeance of the South
--outgrown from questions of Tariff, of Slavery, and of Secession--was to
be poured out in blood and battle; when the panoplied powers and forces
of rebellious confederated States, standing face to face with the
resolute patriotism of an outraged Union, would belch forth flame and
fury and hurtling missiles upon the Federal Fort and the old flag
floating o'er it.

And whose the sacrilegious hand that dared be first raised against his
Country and his Country's flag? Stevens's mortar battery at Sullivan's
Island is ready to open, when a lean, long-haired old man, with eyes
blazing in their deep fanatical sockets, totters hastily forward and
ravenously seizing in his bony hands a lanyard, pulls the string, and,
with a flash and roar, away speeds the shrieking shell on its mission of
destruction; and, while shell after shell, and shot after shot, from
battery after battery, screams a savage accompaniment to the boom and
flash and bellow of the guns, that lean old man