South Carolina’s Governor Francis W. Pickens, who tried to persuade President Buchanan to order Anderson and his garrison back to Moultrie. “If I withdraw Anderson from Sumter,” said the President, “I can travel home to Wheatland by the light of my own burning effigies.” Anderson stayed and Pickens fumed.
Fort Sumter was now preparing for attack. Thirty-eight more guns were mounted in the first tier of casemates and along the parapet, including heavier 42-pounders and Columbiads. Five Columbiads were mounted in the parade as mortars and three howitzers about the sally port (gateway) in the gorge. By April 12, a total of 60 guns were ready. “Bombproof” shelters and “splinter-proof” traverses were constructed on the parade ground and along the parapet. Overhanging galleries were built out from the parapet at strategic points for dropping shells on an assaulting force. Special protection was given the sally port. The second tier of casemates was left unarmed, however, and the 8-foot-square openings in the outer wall were bricked up. The small size of Anderson’s garrison did not permit manning them.
One of several Columbiads that Anderson had mounted as mortars inside Fort Sumter to fire on Morris Island and Charleston. None of them, however, were used during the bombardment.
Charleston, too, prepared. Besides continuing routine maintenance at Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie, additional batteries were set up on Sullivans Island, at Cummings Point on Morris Island, and outside Fort Johnson. An “ironclad” Columbiad battery, constructed of inclined logs plated with iron, was also mounted at Cummings Point. Meanwhile, Governor Pickens continued to allow Anderson to buy fresh meat and vegetables in town to supplement his garrison “issue” supply.
On March 1, the Confederate States government assumed control of military operations in and around Charleston Harbor and sent Brig. Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard to take command. Like Anderson, Beauregard (who arrived at Charleston on March 3) was a veteran of the Mexican War. He was a member of a Louisiana family of distinguished French lineage. Late captain in the U. S. Army, he had served briefly as superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point as recently as January. Once, years back, he had studied artillery there under Major Anderson. Now, pupil confronted master.
President Abraham Lincoln wanted his inaugural address to convey a conciliatory message to the South. Most Southerners, however, like Emma Holmes of Charleston, thought it “stupid, ambiguous, vulgar and insolent” and “a virtual declaration of war.” When Lincoln decided to send supplies to Anderson, Confederate efforts to force the evacuation of Sumter took on new urgency.
When Abraham Lincoln assumed office as President of the United States on March 4, he made it clear in a firm but generally conciliatory inaugural address that national authority must be upheld against the threat of disunion. As to the Federal forts and property in the seceded States, he said: “The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government....” (He did not say “repossess.”) Furthermore, there need be “no bloodshed or violence” as the result of this policy “unless it be forced upon the national authority.” The President concluded:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.