The artillery instructor was a officer in the South Carolina militia. South Carolina owned the guns, projectiles and the powder. The fact they had no direct orders from Beauregard isn’t the point.
Again if the first resupply effort was fired on by anybody, chances are that the second one would be fired on. Davis would have ordered Beauregard to fire on Sumter if the girl scouts in canoes were ferrying provisions to Sumter. He was not going to allow the fort to continue to be occupied by U.S. Forces. Lincoln could have sent a completely unarmed ship to Charleston with nothing but hard tack, coffee, and beans, and Davis would have ordered Beauregard to reduce the fort regardless. Davis had been warned that firing on Sumter would mean war. Davis accepted that fact and gave the order.
Kinda is. If you are going to allege the government of South Carolina did something, you have to demonstrate a chain of command carrying out such orders.
Now the South Carolina government and people were probably delighted that the Citadel cadets fired at that ship, but no one told them to do so in any official capacity.
He was not going to allow the fort to continue to be occupied by U.S. Forces.
Actually he was. This was quite clear in the message that was sent to Beauregard. I believe it said that if Anderson would simply name the time he would evacuate, they would give him all the time he required.
Anderson had already written the evacuation order, and I believe it said they would have left the fort in a few days.
You may not want to accept this, but it was the telegraphed arrival of all those ships of war that triggered the attack.
Look at the records. You will find that the Harriet Lane was sighted in the Channel an hour or so before the decision to attack had been made.
The Confederates knew those warships were coming. They were led to believe those warships would have immediately engaged in a foolish attack upon them, because that's what the ship's orders said they would do.
Lincoln knew the Navy department leaked like a sieve, and Lieutenant Porter had advised him that any information going through that department would be "flashed across the wires" to the South.
The Confederates knew far in advance what those ships were supposed to do, and they planned accordingly believing those ships would follow their known orders.
The ships arrived, and that triggered an attack that would not have otherwise happened.
Bull Snipe: "The artillery instructor was a officer in the South Carolina militia.
South Carolina owned the guns, projectiles and the powder.
The fact they had no direct orders from Beauregard isn’t the point."
Important to remember that when the Star of the West arrived at Charleston Harbor, January 9, 1861, there was no Confederacy, no chain of command, only South Carolina had seceded, and Union Maj. P.G.T. Beauregard was on his way to take command of cadets at West Point.
As for Charleston cadets firing on the civilian steamer Star of the West, it's inconceivable they did so without permission -- indeed, they could not have even known Star of the West was a "hostile" without being so informed.
Regardless, the incident demonstrated that Confederates would not willingly tolerate normal, peaceful resupply of Fort Sumter.
A different method would have to be found.