Whether coming by land or water, there was but one course left for the State to pursue, consistent with her sovereignty or the welfare of her people, and that was, to prevent those troops reaching the fort. Accordingly, orders were given to the officers in command of the other stations in the bay of Charleston to arrest or sink any vessel carrying United States troops to Fort Sumter. Yesterday morning a steamer, supposed to be the Star of the West, attempted to enter the harbor. A gun was fired across her bows from the battery on Morris' Island. She went on without regarding it, and then she was fired into with such effect that she turned back and went to sea.
All revolutions are blunders.
They are never intended. The huge blunder now marring the counsels of the Government of the United States seems to be, that the Union can be maintained by violence and war, and that South Carolina can be cowed by demonstration of military coercion. Every step taken in this direction only widens the gulf between the Northern and Southern States, and drives the Southern States more speedily together into a Southern Confederacy. Thousands, and tens of thousands, longing for a Southern Confederacy, with an eternal separation from the people of the North, will hail him as their detested but most efficient deliverer. By all means, lest Charleston be blockaded.