As commandant, Gardner took up residence with his family outside of the walls of the fort in a large house directly opposite the Western Postern-Gate. Living in the nearby community he could not take a very active or visible role giving aid to the fort fearing reprisal to his family and himself. On one occasion, when a secession meeting was taking place nearby, accompanied with threats and demonstrations, Gardner sent word to Doubleday to assume command of the fort at once in his place. Although he was a Union officer, Gardner still held various southern sympathies and felt that the South had been treated unfairly in the question of territories and had been defrauded by the interests in the North. However, he acquiesced when it came to defending the forts in Charleston Harbor.Doubleday, 1876, pp.18–19 During the months leading up to the Civil War Gardner, realizing that secessionist tensions were mounting, made several requests to President James Buchanan's Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, for troops to reinforce the garrison at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island, but his requests were ignored. A southern sympathizer who was later indicted for conspiracy, Floyd had been going through great lengths to put the forts at Charleston Harbor in the hands of the South Carolinians. Instead Floyd, aware that armed conflict was imminent, only sent a company of about 70 men, most of whom were southern sympathizers, "for purposes of repairing, strengthening and making additions to the fort", the activity of which only rendered the fort much less defensible. The workers he sent to Moultrie were to be fed from existing provisions at the fort, which depended on Charleston for its supplies on a weekly basis. In the event of a siege the garrison could be starved out in a matter of days, as Floyd was planning for. Gardner had become suspicious of Floyd's planning and to avert any attempts to starve out the troops he wrote to an old friend, Colonel Joseph P. Taylor, in the commissary department, requesting provisions for one hundred men for six months and hinted that he could carry out the requisition in the normal line of duty without having to inform Floyd.
