The point is that it would have taken more than an undisciplined mob to have seriously threaten Fort Moultrie. I doubt that even the South Carolina Militia at that time was trained well enough to take Fort Moultrie, even with Anderson's understrenght garrison. A garrison who were supposed to be trained professional full time soldiers. It would have been murderious to have tried to take that Fort and the citizens of Charleston, from the Newspaper report of Dec. 13th, would have been well aware of that fact. The Forts defensive elements were common knowledge even to the Newspapers.

Also the Charleston authorities did not even try to occupy the United States Arsenal, in Charleston itself, until it was surrendered. They simply posted sentries around the facility and would not let anyone in or out without a reason. That was the Charleston Arsenal commanders complaint in his reports, made many days after Anderson had occupied Fort Sumter, was that they were being held in the arsenal. That does not sound like an overtly aggressive mob scene, with pitchforks, tar, feathers, boiling oil and clubs beating down the doors of the Arsenal.

So what was Anderson afraid of from the citizens of Charleston while he was setting in a Fort surrounded by a moat and the ocean, with the approached covered by howitzers and loopholes for the riflemen? I wonder how many of our embassy guard forces have ever felt threaten by the local populas in some of the countries that aren't too friendly to the United States? I wonder what Anderson would have done, for example, had he been in command of the American Embassy Marine Guard force in Iran in 1978?