D.C. BUELL, Assistant Adjutant-General.
FORT MOULTRIE, S.C., December 11, 1860.

This is in conformity to my instructions to Major Buell.

JOHN B. FLOYD, Secretary of War.

[Sidenote] Doubleday, "Forts Sumter and Moultrie," p. 51.

Upon mere superficial inspection these instructions disclosed only the
then dominant anxiety of the Administration to prevent collision. But
if we remember that they were sent to Major Anderson without the
President's knowledge, and without the knowledge of General Scott,[1]
and especially if we keep in sight the state of public sentiment of
both Charleston and Washington and the paramount official influences
which had taken definite shape in the President's truce, we can easily
read between the lines that they were most artfully contrived to lull
suspicion while effectually restraining Major Anderson from any act or
movement which might check or control the insurrectionary preparations.
He must do nothing to provoke aggression; he must take no hostile
attitude without evident and imminent necessity; he must not move his
troops into Fort Sumter, unless it were attempted to attack or take
possession of one of the forts or such a design were tangibly
manifested. Practically, when the attempt to seize the vacant forts
might come it would be too late to prevent it, and certainly too late
to move his own force into either of them. Practically, too, any
serious design of that nature would never be permitted to come to his
knowledge. Supplement these literal negations and restrictions by the
unrecorded verbal explanations and comments said to have been made by
Major Buell, by his disapproval of the meager defensive preparations
which had been made, such as his declaration that a few loop-holes
"would have a tendency to irritate the people," and we can readily
imagine how a faithful officer, whose reiterated calls for help had
been refused, felt, that under such instructions, such surroundings,
and such neglect "his hands were tied," and that he and his little
command were a foredoomed sacrifice.[2]

----------
[1] "The President has listened to him [General Scott] with due
friendliness and respect, but the War Department has been little
communicative. Up to this time he has not been shown the written
instructions of Major Anderson, nor been informed of the purport of
those more recently conveyed to Fort Moultrie verbally by Major
Buell."--Gen. Scott (by G.W. Lay) to Twiggs, Dec