100,000 volunteers,
the issue of $1,000,000 in treasury notes, and the organisation of a
navy. To take charge of military operations at Charleston, the
Confederate government commissioned Pierre T. Beauregard a
brigadier-general and placed him in command of South Carolina.

Beauregard quickly learned of Lincoln's decision to relieve Sumter,
and upon the Confederate authorities devolved the grave responsibility
of reducing the fort before the relief expedition arrived. In
discussing this serious question Robert Toombs, the Confederate
secretary of state, did not hesitate to declare that "the firing upon
it at this time is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at
the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from
mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us
to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."[761]

[Footnote 761: Pleasant A. Stovall, _Life of Robert Toombs_, p. 226.]

Nevertheless, Jefferson Davis, already overborne by pressure from
South Carolina, ordered Beauregard to demand its evacuation, and, if
refused, "to reduce it."[762] Answering Beauregard's aides, who
submitted the demand on the afternoon of April 11, Anderson refused to
withdraw, adding, "if you do not batter the fort to pieces about us,
we shall be starved out in a few days."[763] To this message the
Confederate Secretary of War replied: "Do not desire needlessly to
bombard Fort Sumter. If Major Anderson will state the time at which,
as indicated by him, he will evacuate, and agree in the meantime he
will not use his guns against us unless ours should be employed
against Sumter, you are authorised thus to avoid the effusion of
blood. If this or its equivalent be refused, reduce the fort as your
judgment decides to be the most practicable."[764] Four aides submitted
this proposition at a quarter before one o'clock on the morning of
April 12, to which Anderson, after conferring two hours and a half
with his officers, replied, "I will evacuate by noon on the 15th
instant, and I will not in the meantime open fire upon your forces
unless compelled to do so by some hostile act against this fort or the
flag of my Government, should I not receive, prior to that time,
controlling instructions from my Government or additional
supplies."[765]

[Footnote 762: Official Records, Vol. 1, p. 297.]

[Footnote 763: _Ibid._, pp. 13, 59.]

[Footnote 764: _Ibid._, p. 301. Davis's message