[Sidenote] Report, F.J.  Porter.  W.R.[4] Vol.  I., pp. 70-72.

  [Sidenote] Craig to Floyd, Oct. 31, 1860, with Floyd’s indorsement. 
  W.R.  Vol.  I., pp. 67-8.

Captain J.G.  Foster, the engineer to whom this duty was confided, was of New England birth and a loyal and devoted soldier.  He began work on the 12th of September; and not foreseeing the consequences involved, employed in the different works between two and three hundred men, partly hired in Charleston, partly in Baltimore.  There were in the several forts not only the cannon to arm them, but also considerable quantities of ammunition and other government property; and aware of the hum of secession preparation which began to fill the air in Charleston, Captain Foster in October asked the Ordnance Bureau at Washington for forty muskets, with which to arm twenty workmen in Fort Sumter and twenty in Castle Pinckney.  “If,” wrote the Chief of Ordnance to the Secretary of War, “the measure should on being communicated meet the concurrence of the commanding officer of the troops in the harbor, I recommend that I may be authorized to issue forty muskets to the engineer officer.”  Upon this recommendation, Secretary of War Floyd wrote the word “approved.”  Under the usual routine of peaceful times the questions went by mail to Colonel Gardner, then commander of the harbor, “Is it expedient to issue forty muskets to Captain Foster?  Is it proper to place arms in the hands of hired workmen?  Is it expedient to do so?”

  [Sidenote] Gardner to Craig, November 5, 1860.  W.R.  Vol.  I.,
  pp. 68-9.

To this Colonel Gardner replied, under date of November 5, that, repeating what he had already written, his fears were not of any attack on the works, authorized by the city or State, but there was danger of such an attempt from a sudden tumultuary force; and that while in such an event forty muskets would be desirable, he felt “constrained to say that the only proper precaution—­that which has no objection—­is to fill these two companies with drilled recruits (say fifty men) at once, and send two companies from Old Point Comfort to occupy, respectively, Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney.”

  [Sidenote] Dawson, “Historical Magazine,” January, 1872, p. 37.

  [Sidenote] F.J.  Porter to Cooper, November 11, 1860.  W.R.  Vol.  I.,
  pp. 70-72.

His answer and recommendation were both business-like and soldierly, and contained no indications that justify any suspicion of his loyalty or judgment.  Meanwhile, on the heels of this official call for reenforcements, came a still more urgent one.  It is alleged on the one hand that complaints of the inefficiency of Colonel Gardner had reached Washington, and that, in consequence thereof, either the Secretary of War or the President sent for specific information in regard to it.  Major Fitz John Porter, then Assistant Adjutant-General, on duty in the War Department, went