e among the young men of Georgia,
who looked upon the leaders of secession in the Palmetto State as very
presuming, because these leaders thought and acted as if they were the
only representatives of Southern sentiment, and as if the leadership
belonged to them as a matter of right. They seemed to consider that the
mere fact of being born in South Carolina (or Carolina, as they called
it, contemptuously ignoring North Carolina) constituted in itself a
patent of nobility; and their implied scorn of other States caused the
antagonistic feeling which I have mentioned. This was shared by
Anderson, until he found that Georgia also would certainly secede. He
then seemed to lose all interest in the Union, and merely desired to
become a spectator of the contest, and not an actor. His efforts
thenceforth were simply confined to making his fort secure against an
assault. Hardly any amount of provocation could induce him to become the
assailant.

On the day we left Fort Moultrie, Captain Humphreys, of the engineers,
arrived there from Washington, with orders for Captain Foster from the
Secretary of War. I have never learned the purport of these dispatches.

On the 27th, the day after we evacuated the place, Lieutenant-colonel
Wilmot G. De Saussure arrived at Fort Moultrie, at 9 P.M., with his
battalion of Charleston artillery and thirty riflemen; in all, one
hundred and seventy men. (The companies composing the battalion were
the Marion Artillery, the La Fayette Artillery, the German Artillery,
and the Washington Artillery.) I was informed by a spectator that the
new-comers were exceedingly cautious in making an entrance. They were
looking out for mines in all directions, and had brought ladders with
them, on the supposition that there might be torpedoes in front of the
main gates. It was a clear, beautiful evening, and the moon was at the
full. They were greatly enraged to find the flag-staff cut down, for
they had hoped to run up their own flag on the very spot where ours had
formerly waved. They found, too, the gun-carriages burned, and the guns,
which had gradually settled down as the carriages gave way, resting with
their breeches on the platforms, and the muzzles leaning against the
walls. Out of the mouth of each hung a small white string. As many of
the guns had been kept loaded for a considerable length of time, these
strings had been tied by me to the cartridges, in order that the latter
might be pulled out and sunned o