WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A.,
Montgomery, March 1, 1861.
Brig. Gen. P. G. T. BEAUREGARD:
SIR: You will proceed without delay to Charleston and report to Governor Pickens for military duty in that State.
You are authorized by your appointment as brigadier-general, under the provisions of the third section of an act of the Congress to raise Provisional Forces for the Confederate States, to receive into the service of this Government such forces as may be tendered or may volunteer, not to exceed five thousand men, as you may require, or for whom you can make suitable provision. A copy of the act referred to has been this day transmitted to Governor Pickens.
You will report to this Department your arrival at Charleston, and give such information with respect to the defenses of that harbor as you may consider important. You will also secure, if possible, the services of a competent adjutant, and report your action in that behalf to this Department.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
L. P. WALKER,
Secretary of War.
Hindsight is 20/20. It is a pity that the southern government, and remember, it was not voted in with a unamimous vote in any state, the states with hills not suitable for large scale farming all had opposition to secession, not to digress, there was a group of northern legislators in Montgomery seeking to negotiate a resolution, and if our celtic hothead ancestors had not been so eager to get into a war that they approved Sumter being fired upon, might have been able to come up with some remedy.
I think that if it hadn’t been Sumter as the flashpoint, it would have happened somewhere else at some later date. I don’t think there could have been any long-term solution that would have permanently averted armed conflict. Things had been simmering too long.