[Illustration: GUSTAVUS V. FOX, Commanding the Relief Expedition to Fort Sumter; afterward Assistant Secretary of the Navy.]
Sixty-one artillerymen and thirteen musicians, under command of seven or eight officers, constituted the slender garrison. Many of these officers subsequently rose to distinction in the service of their country, in which some of them died. Major Anderson became a major-general and served for a while in his native Kentucky, but was soon compelled by failing health to retire. Captains Abner Doubleday, John G. Foster and Truman Seymour, Lieut. Jefferson C. Davis and Dr. S. Wiley Crawford, the surgeon, became major-generals, and were in service throughout the war; Lieut. Norman J. Hall became colonel of the Seventh Michigan Volunteers, and was thrice brevetted in the regular army for gallantry, especially at Gettysburg; Lieuts. George W. Snyder and Theodore Talbot received promotion, but died early in the war; and Edward Moale, a civilian clerk who rendered great assistance, afterward received a commission in the regular army. One only of the defenders of Sumter afterward joined the Confederacy; this was Lieut. Richard K. Meade, who yielded to the tremendous social and family { 12} pressure that carried so many reluctant men to the wrong side when the war began. Commissioned in the rebel army, he died in 1862.
[Illustration: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT, Commanding U. S. Army, 1861.]
At noon on December 27, Major Anderson solemnized his occupancy of Sumter by formally raising the flag of his country, with prayer by the chaplain, Rev. Matthias Harris, and military ceremonies.
The sight of the national ensign on Sumter was quickly observed from a troop ship in the harbor, which hastened to the city with the news, not only that Anderson had moved from Moultrie to Sumter, but also that he was heavily reinforced, the sixty soldiers thronging the parapet making so good a show as to give the impression of a much larger number. At this news Charleston was thrown into a ferment of rage and excitement. South Carolina troops were at once sent, on December 27, to take possession of Castle Pinckney, the seizure of which was perhaps the first overt act of war on the part of the secessionists. This was followed by the rebel occupation of Forts Moultrie and Johnson, which were gotten into readiness for action, and shore batteries, some of them iron clad, were planted near Moultrie and on Cummings Point, an extremity of Morris Island near to Sumter; so that by the time the preparations were completed, Anderson's gallant little band was effectively covered on four different sides.