In this stronghold, surrounded on all sides by water, he
loyally held possession for the government and sovereignty of the United
States.
The surprised and baffled rage of the South Carolina rebels created a
crisis at Washington that resulted in the expulsion of the President's
treacherous counselors and the reconstruction of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet
to unity and loyalty. The new cabinet, though unable to obtain President
Buchanan's consent to aggressive measures to reestablish the Federal
authority, was, nevertheless, able to prevent further concessions to the
insurrection, and to effect a number of important defensive precautions,
among which was the already mentioned concentration of a small military
force to protect the national capital.
Meanwhile, the governor of South Carolina had begun the erection of
batteries to isolate and besiege Fort Sumter; and the first of these, on
a sand-spit of Morris Island commanding the main ship-channel, by a few
shots turned back, on January 9, the merchant steamer _Star of the
West_, in which General Scott had attempted to send a reinforcement of
two hundred recruits to Major Anderson. Battery building was continued
with uninterrupted energy until a triangle of siege works was
established on the projecting points of neighboring islands, mounting a
total of thirty guns and seventeen mortars, manned and supported by a
volunteer force of from four to six thousand men.
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