In the chap­ter titled “The Major Gets an Idea,” the nar­ra­tive unfolds around Capt. John G. Fos­ter of the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers, respon­si­ble for bol­ster­ing defens­es in Charleston Har­bor dur­ing the tense days fol­low­ing South Car­oli­na’s seces­sion in Decem­ber 1860. Fos­ter, a thir­ty-sev­en-year-old vet­er­an with a dis­tinc­tive appear­ance and a limp from past com­bat, had been inde­pen­dent­ly work­ing to rein­force Fort Sumter and Fort Moul­trie. His efforts includ­ed hir­ing civil­ian work­ers to dig a wet ditch around Fort Moul­trie and erect­ing defens­es to pro­tect against poten­tial infantry attacks. He also ini­ti­at­ed plans to enable Major Ander­son at Fort Sumter to blow up the fort if seces­sion­ist forces took over.

Fos­ter rec­og­nized the crit­i­cal need to arm his work­force, coun­ter­ing a request for forty mus­kets from the fed­er­al arse­nal. This act, while log­i­cal in his view, risked esca­lat­ing ten­sions as the arse­nal’s com­man­der, Col. Ben­jamin Huger, had promised South Car­oli­na’s gov­er­nor to with­hold weapons. A telegram from War Sec­re­tary Floyd empha­sized the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, order­ing Fos­ter to return any removed arms, which he com­plied with, fear­ing the impli­ca­tions of con­flict.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a let­ter from Floyd to Major Ander­son cast doubt on the gov­ern­men­t’s com­mit­ment to keep­ing the forts. Floyd, who faced accu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and betray­al, mod­i­fied ear­li­er orders indi­cat­ing that defend­ing the forts might entail a “use­less sac­ri­fice.” His words sug­gest­ed sur­ren­der in the face of over­whelm­ing oppo­si­tion, a stark con­tra­dic­tion to pre­vi­ous direc­tives to defend the forts at all costs. Floy­d’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion fur­ther rein­forced Ander­son­’s sus­pi­cions of trea­so­nous intent.

Real­iz­ing that Fort Sumter was the only defen­si­ble posi­tion left, Ander­son con­tem­plat­ed mov­ing his troops from Moul­trie to Sumter, rec­og­niz­ing poten­tial back­lash from South Car­oli­na offi­cials. Despite his plan, he chose to keep this deci­sion pri­vate from his offi­cers as he pre­pared for the immi­nent changes in the pre­car­i­ous polit­i­cal land­scape unfold­ing around them.