The Secretary of War placed his big fist on the throat of the trembling President, and the Peace Commissioners could not reach the White House or its councils.
They were forced to await the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.
Jefferson Davis gave himself body and soul to the task of preparing his over-sanguine, credulous people for the possible tragedy of war.
General Beauregard was ordered to command the forces in South Carolina, and erect batteries for the defense of Charleston and the reduction of Fort Sumter in case of an attempt to reënforce it. This grim fort, in the center of the harbor of the chief Southern Atlantic city, commanded the gateway of the Confederacy. If it should be reënforced, the Confederate Government might be strangled by the fall of Charleston, and the landing of an army even before a blow could be struck.
Captain Raphael Semmes was sent North to buy every gun in the market. He was directed to secure machinery, and skilled workingmen to man it, for the establishment of arsenals and shops, and above all to buy any vessel afloat suitable for offensive or defensive work. Not a single ship of any description could be had, and the intervention of the authorities finally prevented the delivery of a single piece of machinery or the arms he had purchased.
Major Huse was sent to Europe on the third day after the inauguration at Montgomery on a similar mission.
General G. W. Rains was appointed to establish a manufactory for ammunition. His work was an achievement of genius. He created artificial niter beds, from which sufficient saltpeter was obtained, and within a year was furnishing the finest powder.
General Gorgas was appointed Chief of Ordnance. There was but one iron mill in the South which could cast a cannon, and that was the little Tredegar works at Richmond, Virginia. The State of Virginia had voted against secession and it would require the first act of war against her Southern sisters to bring her to their defense.
The widespread belief in the North that the South had secretly prepared for war, was utterly false, and yet the impression was of the utmost importance to the President of the Confederacy. It gave his weak government a fictitious strength, and gave him a brief time in which to prepare his raw recruits for their first battle.
Day and night he prayed for peace at any sacrifice save that of honor. The first bloodshed would be the match in the powder magazine. He pressed his Commissioners in Washington for haste.