days. If the permission is founded on courtesy and civility, I am compelled respectfully do decline accepting it, with a reiteration of my thanks for having made it. In connection with this subject, I deem it not improper respectfully to suggest that his excellency may do an act of humanity and great kindness if he will permit one of the New York steamers stop with a lighter and take the women and children of this garrison to that city. The confinement within the walls of this work, and the impossibility of my having it in my power to have them furnished with the proper and usual articles of food, will, I fear, soon produce sickness among them. The compliance with this request will confer a favor upon a class of persons to whom similar indulgences, are always granted even during a siege in time of actual war, and will be duly appreciated by me.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ROBERT ANDERSON,

Major, First Artillery, Commanding Fort Sumter.

P. S. - I hope that the course I have deemed it my duty to take in reference to the supplies will have a tendency to allay an excitement which, judging from the tenor of the paragraphs in to-day's paper, I fear they are trying to get up in the city.

[Inclosure Numbers 3.]

HEADQUARTERS QUARTERMASTER'S DEPARTMENT,
Charleston, January 19, 1861

Major ANDERSON:

DEAR SIR: Inclosed please find copy of letter from Secretary of War. Not waiting your request, I shall send by the mail-boat in the morning two hundred pounds of beef and a lot of vegetables. I requested Lieutenant Talbot to ask you to let me know this evening what supplies you would wish sent daily.

Very respectfully,

L. M. HATCH,

Quartermaster-General, South Carolina Militia.

[Inclosure Numbers 4.]

HEADQUARTERS QUARTERMASTER'S DEPARTMENT,
Charleston, January 19, 1861

Colonel HATCH,

Quartermaster-General:

You are ordered to procure and send down with the mails for Fort Sumter to-morrow a sufficient quantity of fresh meat and vegetables to last the garrison of Fort Sumter for forty-eight hours, and inform Major Anderson that you will purchase and take down every day such provisions from the city market as he may indicate.

D. F. JAMISON.

[Inclosures Numbers 5.]

FORT SUMTER, S. C., January 20, 1861

Colonel L. M. HATCH,

Quartermaster-General:

DEAR SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 19th instant, and also to state that as no arrangements have been made by me with government in reference to supplies for this post,

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