In the chap­ter titled “Per­fidy,” set on April 9, Gov­er­nor Pick­ens, Gen­er­al Beau­re­gard, and for­mer fed­er­al judge Andrew G. Magrath gath­er in Pick­en­s’s office at the Charleston Hotel, anx­ious­ly dis­cussing the deliv­ery of mail addressed to Fort Sumter, halt­ed by Beauregard’s order. The men rec­og­nize the extra­or­di­nary state of affairs due to the loom­ing con­flict with the Union and face a moral dilem­ma con­cern­ing the unopened mail. While ordi­nar­i­ly, the integri­ty of mail is para­mount, Pick­ens ratio­nal­izes that in a time of war, they need to gath­er all per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion.

Ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant, both Magrath and Beau­re­gard shy away from open­ing the mail, lead­ing Pick­ens to take charge. As he ner­vous­ly tears into the let­ters, they decide to lim­it their exam­i­na­tion to offi­cial cor­re­spon­dence, intend­ing to for­ward any per­son­al let­ters with­out read­ing them. How­ev­er, the men inad­ver­tent­ly uncov­er a let­ter from Major Ander­son to Colonel Loren­zo Thomas in Wash­ing­ton, detail­ing an impend­ing sup­ply expe­di­tion for Fort Sumter and impli­cat­ing Cap­tain Fox as the archi­tect of this effort. This rev­e­la­tion height­ens their sus­pi­cions and high­lights the untrust­wor­thi­ness of the Lin­coln admin­is­tra­tion.

More­over, spe­cif­ic let­ters shed light on Anderson’s con­flict­ed loy­al­ties. Despite his new­found hero sta­tus with­in the Con­fed­er­a­cy, the let­ters sug­gest he does not ful­ly sup­port the war efforts, exem­pli­fied by his state­ment that his heart is not in the war. This dis­cov­ery offers the Con­fed­er­a­cy a dou­ble-edged sword; it pro­vides a poten­tial ral­ly­ing point against Ander­son while also invit­ing crit­i­cism from those who might com­mend his brav­ery.

Fol­low­ing this dis­cov­ery, Gov­er­nor Pick­ens prompt­ly com­mu­ni­cates his con­cerns about the North­ern expe­di­tion to Con­fed­er­ate Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son Davis, assert­ing that prepa­ra­tions are under­way in Charleston for an antic­i­pat­ed con­fronta­tion. With thou­sands of troops already deployed and rein­force­ments en route, he express­es con­fi­dence in their readi­ness to defend against what he per­ceives as an immi­nent assault. Over­all, the chap­ter encap­su­lates the ten­sion and strate­gic maneu­ver­ing occur­ring in Charleston as the first hints of war emerge.