With the help of the engineer’s workmen at Moultrie, the boats were loaded during the night with part of the impedimenta of every sort which had to be left in the first crossing, and reached Sumter in the early dawn. The following day, December 27th, was passed like the preceding night, in transferring ammunition and other stores to Sumter; but a month and a half’s supply of provisions, some fuel, and personal effects had to be left. All the guns at Moultrie were spiked, and the carriages of those bearing on Sumter burned, the smoke from these bearing to Charleston the first indication of what had happened. At fifteen minutes before noon the command and one hundred and fifty workmen were formed in a square near the flag-staff of Sumter; the chaplain offered a prayer expressing gratitude for their safe arrival, and prayed that the flag might never be dishonored, but soon float again over the whole country, a peaceful and prosperous nation. “When the prayer was finished, Major Anderson, who had been kneeling, arose, the battalion presented arms, the band played the national air, and the flag went to the head of the flag-staff, amid the loud and earnest huzzas of the command.”[169] [Illustration: SERGEANT HART NAILING THE COLORS TO THE FLAG-STAFF, FORT SUMTER] Intense excitement in Charleston was the natural outcome of Anderson’s action, and the morning of the 27th the governor sent his aide-de-camp, Colonel Pettigrew, accompanied by Major Capers, with a peremptory demand that Anderson should return with his garrison to Moultrie, to which Anderson replied, “Make my compliments to the governor and say to him that I decline to accede to his request; I cannot and will not go back.” The governor’s messenger mentioned that when Governor Pickens came into office he found an understanding between his predecessor (Gist) and the President, by which the status in the harbor was to remain unchanged. Anderson stated “that he knew nothing of it; that he could get no information or positive orders from Washington; ... that he had reason to believe that [the state troops] meant to land and attack him from the north; that the desire of the governor to have the matter settled peaceably and without bloodshed was precisely his own object in transferring his command; ... that he did it upon his own responsibility alone,” as safety required it, “and as he had the right to do.” He added that, “In this controversy between the North and the South, my sympathies are entirely with the South,” but that a sense of duty to his trust was first.[170] The immediate result was the occupancy by the state forces, December 27th, of Pinckney and Moultrie; the seizure, December 30th, of the unoccupied barracks known as Fort Johnson, and of the arsenal, with its ordnance and ordnance stores, valued at four hundred thousand dollars.