sentences:  At a meeting on March 7, General Winfield Scott, the top-ranking general in the army, and John G. Totten, the army's chief engineer, said that simply reinforcing the fort was not possible, although Secretary of the Navy Welles disagreed.Scott advised Lincoln that it would take a large fleet, 25,000 troops, and several months of training in order to defend the fort.On March 13, Postmaster General Blair, the strongest proponent in the cabinet for standing firm at Fort Sumter, introduced Lincoln to his brother-in-law, Gustavus V. Fox.