And you are evidently neither a lawyer nor have you figured much of anything out. The first southern negotiators, a team appointed by South Carolina, reached Washington on December 26, 1860 before a single fort had been taken. They were scheduled to meet with President Buchanan the next day but that was thrown into turmoil thanks to Robert Anderson in Charleston. Anderson had command of the city's forts and was stationed in Fort Moultrie. The other forts, including Sumter, were virtually unoccupied and in a sort of "mothball" state. The War Department and South Carolina were of mutual understanding that neither would act so long as Anderson stayed put in Moultrie and the other forts be left unoccupied. On December 26 that all changed when Anderson, acting unilaterally and without orders, quietly snuck his men over into Fort Sumter. The move was a practical one for him as Sumter was more defensible, but it was also a diplomatic disaster because it came without orders and voided the War Department's part of the bargain in what had been until then a stalemate with neither side acting. In Washington the commander of the army, Gen. Winfield Scott, informed Buchanan that Anderson had recieved "no order, intimation, suggestion, or communication" since his arrival in Moultrie and the War Secretary informed the President that Anderson had acted "in the face of orders." Buchanan met informally with the SC negotiators the day after Anderson's move but only agreed to convey their message to Congress. Also responding to Anderson's move, the South Carolina militia moved in behind him and occupied the forts he had pulled out of starting with the virtually abandoned Fort Johnson, which had been in near ruins for decades.
So in other words, the initiating act of the dispute was NOT the seizure of the forts by the south but rather the occupation of Fort Sumter by the north under a commander who acted without orders and thus unsettled a shaky but nevertheless present peace.
Even later for them.
Actually no it wasn't. The South Carolina negotiators arrived in Washington before any fort had been taken and were met there with the shock that Anderson, acting without order, militarized the mothballed Fort Sumter thereby initiating the events that led to seizure.
Oh, and one more thing. There is also the issue of how the federals came into ownership of the forts in Charleston to begin with. The South Carolina legislature had, over the previous decades, granted them permission by statute to occupy, maintain, and build upon the Charleston forts so long as they were kept in working condition and used for coastal defenses against foreign enemies. Virtually every of the fort in Charleston save Sumter predated the revolution itself and thus was property of South Carolina to begin with. Those authorizations are key because when South Carolina seceded it also repealed all of those previous laws in which it granted the forts to the US army. Thus, by statute, they technically resumed ownership of what was theirs to begin with on December 20, 1860. When SC occupied the abandoned Fort Johnson (built in 1708) a day or two after Anderson moved to Sumter they simply took control of a fort that had been theirs when it was built and had been resumed in ownership when the laws granting it to the army were repealed. Moultrie and Pinckney were taken over the next few days and both were pre-revolutionary properties as well.
Sumter, where Anderson removed to until April 1861, was built by the government in the 1810's and 20's on an artificial island after the South Carolina legislature authorized it. Though that act was also repealed by the secession ordinance, the feds did have a greater claim to Sumter than any of the others since, unlike the others, they built it. But since the SC troops did not take Fort Sumter at the time of the negotiations, they cannot be said to have assumed control over anything other than what South Carolina had constructed itself back in revolutionary days and before. So in that sense they didn't "steal" anything. They reassumed control over what they themselves had constructed by repealing the statutes that had given control to the feds and by moving on them only after they had been abandoned and in direct response to an aggressive act by the commander who abandoned them.
As for the southern states seceding after free elections, that's nonsense. All of the south was essentially under martial law. There was no real freedom, and in particular, the voting in Tennessee that is cited as 'for secession' was taken with Confederate soldiers at the poll booths, and it reversed a recent and resounding free vote to deny secession. On that basis alone the Confederacy was a born a bastard and a fraud.
That's a load of crap. Cite the statute.
South Carolina ceded complete ownership to the federal government. The federal government refused to build the fort until this was done. Since the fort was a pork barrel project initiated by John C. Calhoun, the SC legislature lost no time in transferring the property.
"In the specific case of Fort Sumter, in 1827, the Secretary of War, a man named John C. Calhoun (!) had approved the construction of a new fort in the harbor. The first appropriations were made by Congress in 1828 and construction started on the harbor shoal. In November, 1834, after the Untied States had expended roughly $200,000, a person named Major William Laval, Esq., claimed title to the land& which included the under-construction fort.
A South Carolina statute passed in 1791 established a method by which the state disposed of its vacant lands (we tend to forget that much of the territory of the states was empty in the Nineteenth Century: in the original thirteen states, this land was held by the states; in the remaining part of the country, it was held by the Federal government, except in Texas, where the public lands were retained by the state when it was admitted). Laval used the law to claim title to the land – but he described it in a vague manner and given the lack of decent maps of any of the country, his vagueness hid the exact location of the tract he claimed.
When Laval appeared on the scene, he Corps of Engineers stopped work and asked for instructions. It appeared that Laval had filed a proper claim for the land except that land was below low tide and therefore exempt from purchase.
Well South Carolina was aghast! They did not want to lose the fort to protect themselves, nor the payrolls that would come with the completed fort.
The result was a state law:
The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution:
Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.
Also resolved: That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded.
Also resolved, That the Attorney-General be instructed to investigate the claims of Wm. Laval and others to the site of Fort Sumter, and adjacent land contiguous thereto; and if he shall be of the opinion that these parties have a legal title to the said land, that Generals Hamilton and Hayne and James L. Pringle, Thomas Bennett and Ker. Boyce, Esquires, be appointed Commissioners on behalf of the State, to appraise the value thereof. If the Attorney-General should be of the opinion that the said title is not legal and valid, that he proceed by seire facius of other proper legal proceedings to have the same avoided; and that the Attorney-General and the said Commissioners report to the Legislature at its next session.
Resolved, That this House to agree. Ordered that it be sent to the Senate for concurrence. By order of the House:
T. W. GLOVER, C. H. R.
IN SENATE, December 21st, 1836
Resolved, that the Senate do concur. Ordered that it be returned to the House of Representatives, By order: JACOB WARLY, C. S.
Poor Maj. Laval lost his scheme to blackmail the United States!
For those wishing to further pursue the ownership of Fort Sumter, et. al, most college and university libraries will have American State Papers: Documents Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Military Affairs, vol. 5, Twenty-third Congress, Second Session, No. 591, The Construction of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, pp. 463-472.
The War Department became concerned in the 1890s that they might not have clear title to all of their various installations, so they had a civilian attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s office research the chain of title. Fortunately for us, not only were the various National Cemeteries still War Department properties, but so were most of the forts used in the early Republic, the Civil War and the Indian Wars.
The result was James B. McCrellis, Military Reservations, National Military Parks, and National Cemeteries. Title and Jurisdiction, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898. If you can not locate a hard copy, CIS has copied McCrellis on microfiche: U.S. Executive Branch Documents, 1789-1909: War Department, W 1002.8."
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