The rebels had for weeks been building
batteries to attack the fort, and with Anderson's report came the
written opinions of his officers that it would require an army of
20,000 men to relieve it. They might as well have asked for
twenty thousand archangels, for at that time the entire army of
the United States numbered but 17,113 men, and these were doing
duty, not only in the Southern and Eastern States, but were
protecting settlers from Indians on the great western frontier,
and guarding the long Canadian and Mexican boundaries as well.
Yet Anderson and his men could not be left to their fate without
even an attempt to help them, though some of the high military
and naval officers hastily called into council by the new
President advised this course. It was finally decided to notify
the Confederates that a ship carrying food, but no soldiers,
would be sent to his relief. If they chose to fire upon that it
would be plainly the South, and not the North, that began the
war.
Days went on, and by the middle of April the Confederate
government found itself forced to a fatal choice. Either it must
begin war, or allow the rebellion to collapse. All its claims to
independence were denied; the commissioner it sent to Washington
on the pretense that they were agents of a foreign country were
politely refused a hearing, yet not one angry word, or provoking
threat, or a single harmful act had come from the "Black
Republican" President.
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