At 12:45 in the morning of the 12th, four Confederate messengers (James Chesnut, Jr., Stephen D. Lee, A.R. Chisolm, and Roger Pryor) arrived at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, to deliver Brigadier-General P.G.T. Beauregard’s message to Major Robert Anderson. Beauregard had offered to not bombard the fort if Anderson gave a specific time in which he would voluntarily evacuate.
Anderson held a lengthy discussion with his officers, and at 3 a.m. he informed the officials that he would evacuate Fort Sumter “by noon on the 15th instant,” but only if he did not receive “controlling instructions from my government, or additional supplies.” Anderson also pledged not to fire on the Confederates unless he was attacked first.
By this time, Captain Gustavus V. Fox’s Federal relief fleet headed to Anderson from New York was scattered. Only one warship–the U.S.S. Baltic–was positioned outside the harbor. The other two–the U.S.S. Pawnee and the U.S.S. Harriet Lane–would not arrive until later that morning, and the three tugboats carrying supplies for Anderson’s men could not make the trip. This was not nearly the show of force that the Lincoln administration had hoped for, but it was enough for the Confederates to insist that Anderson evacuate Sumter before the ships tried to get into the harbor…