to refrain from any act of war; “let the first shot,” he said, “come from the enemy. _Burn that precept into your hearts._”[144] It was impossible that the Southern leaders should place themselves, or allow their people to place them, in the attitude of waging war against the Union while even in their own view their states still remained within it. There was, too, still a very large Union sentiment in the South, though finally swept into the vortex by the principle of going with the state, which would not have been averse to a determined action on the part of the President and might have upheld it, as in 1833. Such vigor would have given this sentiment a working basis, through the evidence that the Federal authority was to be upheld; and it would have caused a pause even in the least thoughtful of the secessionists had they felt that their coast strongholds were to be held and all their ports to be in the hands of the enemy. In the dearth of manufactures in the South, the holding of their ports was an essential to Southern military success. Their closure by blockade was equally an essential to the success of the North. The strategy of the situation was of the clearest and most palpable, and with their coast forts in Union hands warlike action on the part of the South is not conceivable. One can thus understand the importance of spreading the reiterated statements of “intense excitement” and “danger of attack” in the event of reinforcement; statements which, in the circumstances, must be regarded, if the phrase may be used, in the nature of a gigantic and successful “bluff.” * * * * * The military property of the United States at Charleston consisted of the armory, covering a few acres, where were stored twenty-two thousand muskets and a considerable number of old, heavy guns, and of three forts named for South-Carolinians of Union-wide fame. The smallest of these, Castle Pinckney, was a round, brick structure, in excellent condition, on a small island directly east of the town and distant from the wharves but half a mile. It completely commanded the town, and had a formidable armament of four forty-two-pounders, fourteen twenty-four-pounders, and four eight-inch sea-coast howitzers. The powder of the arsenal was here stored. The only garrison was an ordnance sergeant, who, with his family, looked after the harbor light which was in the fort.