At the end of October, Captain Foster, foreseeing events, requested the issue of arms to the workmen to protect property, and the Secretary of War approved the issue of forty muskets, if it should meet the concurrence of the commanding officer. Colonel Gardner, in reply, November 5th, doubted the expediency, as most of the laborers were foreigners, indifferent to which side they took, and wisely advised, instead, filling up “at once” the two companies at Moultrie with recruits and sending two companies from Fort Monroe to the two other forts.[145] The requisition was thus held in abeyance, and the muskets remained at the arsenal. When, only two days later, Gardner, urged by the repeated solicitations of his officers, directed the transfer of musket ammunition to Moultrie, the loading of the schooner was objected to by the owner of the wharf, and the military store-keeper, under apparently very inadequate pressure, returned the stores to the arsenal. A permit, given by the mayor of Charleston next day, for the removal was very properly declined by Gardner, on the ground that the city authorities could not control his actions.[146] The affair, however, cost Gardner his command, by a process described by the Assistant Secretary of State, Trescot: “I received a telegram from Charleston, saying that intense excitement prevailed, ... and that, if the removal was by orders of the Department of War, it ought to be revoked, otherwise collision was inevitable. Knowing the Cabinet were then in session, I went over to the White House.... I took Governor Floyd aside, and he was joined, I think, by Messrs. Cobb and Toucey, and showed them the telegram. Governor Floyd replied, ‘Telegraph back at once; say that you have seen me, that no such orders have been issued, and none such will be issued, under any circumstances.’” Floyd, a day or so later, gave Trescot “his impressions of the folly of Colonel Gardner’s conduct, and his final determination to remove him and supply his place with Major Robert Anderson, in whose discretion, coolness, and judgment he put great confidence. He also determined to send Colonel Ben. Huger to take charge of the arsenal, believing that his high reputation, his close association with many of the most influential people in Charleston, and the fact of his being a Carolinian, would satisfy the state of the intention of the government.”[147] That Floyd himself was in an uncertain state of mind is shown by his willingness to begin and continue the work upon the forts; that his mental state did not permit logical action is clear from his temper and attitude regarding the transfer of musket ammunition November 7th, though but the week before (October 31st) he had authorized the transfer of the muskets themselves.