On the twenty-ninth of March, he (Lincoln) had ordered that three ships — the Pocahontas, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane — together with three hundred men and provisions be made ready to sail for the Charleston harbor. Lincoln to Cameron, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 226; Inclosure No. 1, op. cit., page 227.
These orders were all marked private. On the first of April, he sent a message to Commandant Andrew H. Foote at Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York to “fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible moment under sealed orders.”Lincoln to Andrew H. Foote, in op. cit., page 229
These instructions were confirmed with another telegram which contained these words: “You will fit out the Powhatan without delay. Lieutenant Porter will relieve Captain Mercer in command of her. She is bound on secret service; and you will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out.” In all, consisted of eight warships, carrying twenty-six guns and one thousand, four hundred men.
And they wonder why the Confederates thought Lincoln was a liar when he said he was just shipping supplies.
There is no possible way that you can keep secret the movement of troops onto a ship in any of the Northern ports.
I have come to the conclusion that Lincoln, no fool he, absolutely counted on the Confederates knowing that he was shipping men and guns. He wanted that move to provoke them, all the while the Northern Public wouldn't have been aware of it, and would see the entire action as a deliberate attack from the South.
The "secrecy" was only for the Northern people who would not be paying attention to Union ship or troop movements, and most assuredly was not for Confederate spies or sympathizers who would have been intently watching all the Union military assets for just such a move.
I don't think those are the correct numbers of ships or men which actually arrived off Charleston port.
Regardless, the number intended to reinforce Fort Sumter, only if necessary, was a much smaller sub-set of that total of 1,400 men.