James Buchanan, Buchanan's administration on the eve of the rebellion

‘ [188] remedy only is left, and that is to withdraw the garrison from the harbor of Charleston altogether.’ This evidently foreshadowed the demand made by the commissioners on the following day (28th December), of which we have already treated. This proposition the President heard with astonishment. As he had stated in his reply to them of the 31st December: ‘Such an idea was never thought of by me. No allusion had ever been made to it in any communication between myself and any human being.’

The Secretary, on the 29th December, sent to the President the resignation of his office. By this he offered to discharge its duties until his successor should be appointed. It was instantly accepted without reference to this offer, and Postmaster General Holt was transferred to the War Department.

The President had not made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Floyd before his appointment. Though never in Congress, he had been, like his father, Governor of Virginia. Mr. Buchanan had been favorably impressed by the fact that he had refused to accept a recommendation from the Electoral College of Virginia for a seat in the Cabinet, assigning as a reason that the President, in making selections for this high and confidential office, ought to be left free and untrammelled to the exercise of his own judgment.

The removal of Major Anderson to Fort Sumter, and the seizure by South Carolina of all the remaining public property at Charleston, altogether changed the aspect of affairs from what it had been at the date of the interview between General Scott and the President. Fort Sumter was now threatened with an immediate attack. The time had arrived for despatching the Brooklyn on her destined expedition for its relief. At this crisis General Scott, being too unwell to call in person, addressed a note to the President, on Sunday, the 30th December, asking his permission to send, without reference to the War Department, and otherwise as secretly as possible, two hundred and fifty recruits from New York harbor to reenforce Fort Sumter, together with some extra muskets or rifles, ammunition and subsistence stores, expressing the hope ‘that a sloop-of-war and ’