Contemporaneously with this there was also undertaken another enterprise for the relief of Fort Pickens at Pensacola.  It was, however, kept so strictly secret that the President did not even communicate it to Mr. Welles.  Apparently his only reason for such extreme reticence lay in the proverb:  “If you wish your secret kept, keep it.”  But proverbial wisdom had an unfortunate result upon this occasion.  Both the President and Mr. Welles set the eye of desire upon the warship Powhatan, lying in New York harbor.  The secretary designed her for the Sumter fleet; the President meant to send her to Pensacola.  Of the Sumter expedition she was an absolutely essential part; for the Pensacola plan she was not altogether indispensable.

On April 6 Captain Mercer, on board the Powhatan as his flagship, and on the very point of weighing anchor to sail in command of the Sumter reinforcement, under orders from Secretary Welles, was astounded to find himself dispossessed and superseded by Lieutenant Porter, who suddenly came upon the deck bringing an order signed by the President himself.  A few hours later, at Washington, a telegram startled Mr. Welles with the news.  Utterly confounded, he hastened, in the early night-time, to the White House, and obtained an audience of the President.  Then Mr. Lincoln learned what a disastrous blunder he had made; greatly mortified, he requested Mr. Seward to telegraph with all haste to New York that the Powhatan must be immediately restored to Mercer for Sumter.  Lieutenant Porter was already far down the bay, when he was overtaken by a swift tug bringing this message.  But unfortunately Mr. Seward had so phrased the dispatch that it did not purport to convey an order either from the President or the secretary of the navy, and he had signed his own name:  “Give up the Powhatan to Mercer.  SEWARD.”  To Porter, hurriedly considering this unintelligible occurrence, it seemed better to go forward under the President’s order than to obey the order of an official who had no apparent authority to command him.  So he steamed on for Pensacola.

On April 8, discharging the obligation of warning, Mr. Lincoln notified General Beauregard that an attempt would be made to put provisions into Sumter, but not at present to put in men, arms, or ammunition, unless the fort should be attacked.  Thereupon Beauregard, at two o’clock P.M. on April 11, sent to Anderson a request for a surrender.  Anderson refused, remarking incidentally that he should be starved out in a few days.  At 3.20 A.M., on April 12, Beauregard notified Anderson that he should open fire in one hour.  That morning the occupants of Sumter, 9 commissioned officers, 68 non-commissioned officers and privates, 8 musicians, and 43 laborers, breakfasted on pork and water, the last rations in the fort.  Before daybreak the Confederate batteries were pouring shot and shell against the walls.  Response was made from as many guns as the small body of defenders could handle.  But the fort was more easily damaged than were the works on the mainland, and on the morning of the 13th, the officers’ quarters having caught fire, and the magazine being so imperiled that it had to be closed and covered with earth, the fort became untenable.  Early in the evening terms of capitulation were agreed upon.