In Novem­ber 1860, Colonel John L. Gard­ner, the com­man­der of U.S. Army forces in Charleston, South Car­oli­na, faced mount­ing anx­i­ety as ten­sions esca­lat­ed over the seces­sion move­ment. Gard­ner was respon­si­ble for sev­er­al key mil­i­tary instal­la­tions, most notably Fort Moul­trie on Sullivan’s Island, which had his­tor­i­cal ties to Edgar Allan Poe. The polit­i­cal cli­mate inten­si­fied con­cerns that local cit­i­zens might attempt to seize Fort Moul­trie, which was poor­ly for­ti­fied and unique­ly vul­ner­a­ble to inter­nal threats. The fort was designed pri­mar­i­ly to guard against for­eign naval attacks and had lit­tle defense against a poten­tial assault from its rear, where imped­ing sand hills offered favor­able posi­tions for ene­my sharp­shoot­ers.

His­tor­i­cal­ly low troop num­bers and inad­e­quate sup­plies com­pound­ed Gard­ner’s trou­bles. He expressed wor­ries in cor­re­spon­dence regard­ing the civil­ian work­ers at the forts, who far out­num­bered his sol­diers and expressed indif­fer­ence towards seces­sion based on mon­e­tary incen­tives. Gard­ner feared the work­ers might turn against the fort on a bribe. He request­ed addi­tion­al troops to help secure the posts. Mean­while, high­er Army offi­cials rec­og­nized Gard­ner’s incom­pe­tence and planned to replace him with Major Robert Ander­son, a ded­i­cat­ed offi­cer who had pre­vi­ous­ly served at Fort Moul­trie and demon­strat­ed both loy­al­ty to the Union and knowl­edge of local dynam­ics.

Upon assum­ing com­mand on Novem­ber 21, 1860, Ander­son sought to fos­ter a friend­ly atmos­phere, wel­com­ing local cit­i­zens to the fort. How­ev­er, he quick­ly iden­ti­fied crit­i­cal weak­ness­es with­in the for­ti­fi­ca­tions and echoed Gard­ner’s plea for rein­force­ments at Fort Sumter and Cas­tle Pinck­ney. Ander­son believed that a strong defense pos­ture was the best deter­rent to poten­tial aggres­sion from local seces­sion­ists.

Despite attempts to main­tain a civ­il rela­tion­ship with Charleston’s cit­i­zens, dis­tur­bances deep­ened, exem­pli­fied by a parade of young mili­tia mem­bers that pub­li­cized their seces­sion agen­da. In his reports, Ander­son not­ed the omi­nous pre­lude to con­flict, declar­ing that the long-loom­ing storm of war was near, as prepa­ra­tions inten­si­fied for an inevitable con­fronta­tion over fed­er­al author­i­ty in the South .