Battle of Fort Sumter

The American Civil War began in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, in the early hours of 12 April 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter, a federal fort held by a small US Army garrison. After some 34 hours of bombardment, Major Robert Anderson agreed to give up the fort on 13 April. No one was killed by enemy fire, but the attack united Northern opinion behind the Union and pushed four more slave states into the Confederacy.

South Carolina declared its secession on 20 December 1860, weeks after Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election. By February six more Southern states had followed, and together they formed the Confederate States of America. Across the South, state forces seized federal arsenals and forts.

In Charleston, Anderson commanded the garrison at Fort Moultrie, which could not be defended from the land side. On the night of 26 December he quietly moved his men by boat to Fort Sumter, a powerful but unfinished fortress on an island at the mouth of the harbour. South Carolina regarded this as a breach of faith and occupied the other harbour positions and the federal arsenal. When President James Buchanan sent an unarmed merchant ship, the Star of the West, with supplies and troops, shore batteries fired on it on 9 January 1861 and forced it to turn back.

Through the winter the garrison of 85 officers and men, plus civilian workers, struggled with short rations and limited fuel. In March the Confederate government put General P. G. T. Beauregard in command at Charleston. A trained engineer and a former pupil of Anderson's at West Point, he ringed the harbour with guns and mortars and cut off supplies from the city.

Lincoln, inaugurated on 4 March, soon learned that the fort had only about six weeks of food left. Both sides wanted to avoid being seen as the aggressor, which might cost them support in the undecided border states. On 6 April Lincoln informed South Carolina's governor that he would send provisions only, and would not add men or weapons unless the fort was attacked. Jefferson Davis and his cabinet decided to demand the fort's surrender and to reduce it before the relief arrived. Anderson refused to leave at once, offering to go by 15 April unless he received fresh orders or supplies, and the Confederate envoys judged this too conditional.

At 4:30 a.m. on 12 April a signal shell burst over the fort, and dozens of guns and mortars around the harbour began firing. Anderson waited for daylight before replying. Short of men and of cloth powder bags, he could use only a few of his guns, and the most powerful ones, on the exposed top tier, were too dangerous to man. A relief squadron under Gustavus Fox arrived off the harbour but could not get supplies through the fire and heavy seas.

Confederate gunners fired red-hot shot into the wooden barracks inside the fort. On 13 April fires spread towards the main magazine, the flagpole was shot away, and the garrison was running out of ammunition and food. After an unofficial visit by the former senator Louis Wigfall under a white flag, Anderson accepted terms to evacuate, and the fort was handed over that afternoon.

Anderson's men left on 14 April after saluting their flag. During the salute a pile of cartridges exploded, mortally wounding two soldiers, Daniel Hough and Edward Galloway, the first military deaths of the war. Lincoln then called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. Northern states answered eagerly, but the call drove four more slave states to secede and join the Confederacy.

The Confederates held Sumter against repeated Union attacks until February 1865, when they abandoned Charleston. On 14 April 1865, four years after the surrender, Anderson returned to raise the same flag over the ruined fort.

The war fell between our map years: the 1815 map shows the United States before secession, and the 1878 map shows the reunited country after the Confederacy's defeat.