Pickett declined, and the British officer returned to his frigate, threatening to land his own men. Pickett with his 68 men appeared to be fully prepared to oppose a British landing, ordering them into a line of battle near the beach. "Don't be afraid of their big guns," he told his men, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it." Pickett's presence and determination prevented the landing, the British being under orders to avoid armed conflict with United States forces, if possible. Pickett had set up camp and his battery of cannon near the Hudson's Bay Company's Belle Vue Sheep Farm, and directly under the cannons of the British warship. Having this error pointed out to him, he moved the camp and battery a few miles north to high ground, to a spot overlooking Griffin Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. After initial tensions passed the crisis was averted, both sides being unwilling to go to war over a pig. President James Buchanan dispatched Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott to negotiate a settlement between the parties. There is also some controversy that Pickett and General William S. Harney, per General Granville O. Haller, maneuvered behind the scenes to provoke a war between the United States and Britain, to distract the North, allowing the South to seek independence or, as General George B. McClellan said, to unite the North and South. On April 19, after the firing on Battle of Fort Sumter and in response to President Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion, Virginia joined three more Southern states in seceding from the Union. Native son Pickett sailed from San Juan Island to Bellingham, Washington to resign his commission and was told by his commander that he had to resign it in Washington, D.C. To accomplish this he sailed to Fort Steilacoom, south of Tacoma, Washington and caught transport aboard a mail steamer to the Isthmus of Panama, trekked 40 miles overland to Colon, caught another ship to Richmond, Virginia to obtain a commission in the Army of Northern Virginia, and then to Washington, D.C. to turn in his resignation. Arriving after the First Battle of Bull Run, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army on June 25, 1861; he had been holding a commission as a major in the Confederate States Army Artillery since March 16. Within a month he was appointed colonel in command of the Rappahannock Line of the Department of Fredericksburg, Virginia, under the command of Major General Theophilus H. Holmes.