meet so unhappy a contingency. He has therefore directed me verbally to give you such instructions.*

You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression; and for that treason you are not, without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile attitude. But you are to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked you are to defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but an attack on or attempt to take possession of any one of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.

D. C. BUELL,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

ENGINEER DEPARTMENT,

Washington, December 12, 1860.

Captain J. G. FOSTER,

Corps of Engineers, Charleston, S. C.:

SIR: In compliance with request communicated by your letter of the 8th instant, application has ben made for $5,000, to be remitted to the assistant treasurer at Charleston, to be held subject to your check, and that amount will be charged to you on account of Fort Sumter.

The Secretary of the Treasury is, of course, fully inform as to the amount of funds in each of the Government depositories, and the Department cannot, therefore, with proper courtesy to him, urge a remittance to you on the ground that there are funds at Charleston while he, with the fullest knowledge of all the facts, and of other public wants, declines to draw on them.

A special application in your behalf for $1,800 from "Contingencies of fortifications" has already been made at the Treasury, without other result than an assurance that that amount would be sent to you "if practicable," and nothing more can now be done than issue the usual request for the $5,000 last asked for.

Congress, it is hoped, will very soon adopt some means of relief for the present condition of things, and no doubt is entertained that all demands upon he Treasury which are no in suspense will then be met with the least possible delay.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. E. DE RUSSY,

Lieutenant-Colonel, Engineers, Commanding.

FORT MOULTRIE, S. C., December 13, 1860.

Colonel R. E. DE RUSSY,

Commanding Corps of Engineers, &c.:

COLONEL: I have the honor to inform you that Lieutenant R. K. Meade, Corps of Engineers, reported to me for duty on the 10th instant, I

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*See also Floyd to Anderson, December 21, 1860, and Hold to

Anderson, February 23, 1861, post.

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