Download Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter
April 12th-14th 1861
1861 Model of Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
►
When the Civil War finally exploded in Charleston Harbor, it
was the result of a half-century of growing sectionalism.
Escalating crises over property rights, human rights, states
rights and constitutional rights divided the country as it
expanded westward. Underlying all the economic, social
and political rhetoric was the volatile question of slavery.
Because its economic life had long depended on enslaved
labor, South Carolina was the first state to secede when
this way of life was threatened. Confederate forces fired
the first shot in South Carolina, and the federal
government responded with force.
April
►
th
12
1861
On April 8, Lincoln notified Gov. Francis Pickens of South Carolina
that he would attempt to resupply the fort. The Confederate
commander at Charleston, Gen.P.G.T. Beauregard, was ordered by
the Confederate government to demand the evacuation of the fort
and if refused, to force its evacuation. On April 11, General
Beauregard delivered the ultimatum to Anderson, who replied,
"Gentlemen, if you do not batter the fort to pieces about us, we shall
be starved out in a few days." On direction of the Confederate
government in Montgomery, Beauregard notified Anderson that if he
would state the time of his evacuation, the Southern forces would
hold their fire. Anderson replied that he would evacuate by noon on
April 15 unless he received other instructions or additional supplies
from his government. (The supply ships were expected before that
time.) Told that his answer was unacceptable and that Beauregard
would open fire in one hour, Anderson shook the hands of the
messengers and said in parting, "If we do not meet again in this
world, I hope we may meet in the better one." At 4:30 A.M. on April
12, 1861, 43 Confederate guns in a ring around Fort Sumter began
the bombardment that initiated the bloodiest war in American
history.
Sumter
►
On April 12th at 4:30 AM he
opened fire, bombarding the
fort with heavy fire. Major
Anderson, with his ammunition
on fire and supplies depleted,
surrendered the following day
and left the fort on April 14th.
Although no casualties were
caused by the enemy, one Union
soldier was killed during the
surrendering ceremony when a
cannon backfired. The fort was
neither a strategic location nor a
deciding battle, but it did start
what was to be the United
States worst war and one of the
bloodiest in history
24hr Bombardment
Map of Charleston Harbor
Confederate Flag April 14th 1861
over Fort Sumter
Anderson’s surrender notification
View Inside Fort Sumter
Major Anderson
►
A pro-slavery Kentuckian but absolutely loyal to the Union,
Robert Anderson was considered an ideal choice for commander
in Charleston Harbor during the 1860 secession crisis. Having
graduated from West Point (1825), he had risen to major, 1st
Artillery, by the time of his assignment on November 15,1860.
Given little assistance by the Buchanan Administration,
Anderson was greatly perturbed by having to choose between
war and peace. He took matters into his own hands on
December 26, following the secession of the state six days
earlier, when he moved his two-company garrison from barely
defensible Fort Moultrie to unfinished Fort Sumter in the middle
of the harbor.
After the unannounced relief ship Star Of the West was
fired upon by Carolinian gunners on January 9, 1861, Anderson,
not wishing to start a war, withheld his fire. Later, after he had
turned down an April surrender demand, Anderson was forced to
return fire when the fort was bombarded on April 12-13. Forced
to surrender, Anderson returned to the North with a sense of
failure in not having prevented the war.
He was appointed brigadier general, USA, on May 15, 186
1, and commanded the Department of Kentucky (May 28-August
15, 1861), which was merged into the Department of the
Cumberland (August 15 -October 8, 186 1), which he also
commanded. When his health began to fail, he was relieved of
field command and given duties at various posts in the North. He
was retired from the regular army on October 27, 1863, and
brevetted major general for Fort Sumter. After the recapture of
Charleston, Anderson took part in a ceremony in which he
reraised the same flag he had lowered exactly four years earlier.
General Beaugard
►
The services of "The Hero of Fort Sumter," Pierre G.T.
Beauregard, were not utilized to their fullest due to
bad blood between the Confederate general and
Jefferson Davis. His Confederate assignments
included: brigadier general, CSA (March 1, 1861);
commanding Charleston Harbor (March 3 - May 27,
1861); commanding Alexandria Line June 2-20,
1861); commanding Army of the Potomac June 20 July 20, 1861); commanding Ist Corps, Army of the
Potomac July 20 - October 22, 1861); general, CSA
(August 31, 1861 to rank from July 21); commanding
Potomac District, Department of Northern Virginia
(October 22, 1861 - January 29, 1862); commanding
Army of the Mississippi (March 17-29 and April 6 May 7, 1862); second in command, Army of the
Mississippi and Department Y2 (March 29-April 6,
1862); commanding the department (April 6 - June
17, 1862); commanding Department of South
Carolina, Georgia and Florida (August 29, 1862 - April
20, 1864); commanding Department of North Carolina
and Southern Virginia (April 22-ca. September 23,
1864); commanding Military Division of the West
(October 17, 1864-March 16, 1865); and second in
command, Army of Tennessee (March 16-April 26,
1865).
Fort Sumter Looking Towards
Morris Island
Guns of Fort Sumter
Forts Interior
Walls of Sumter
Guns of Fort Johnson, With
Sumter on the Horizon
View of Fort Sumter in the Distance as Seen From Ft. Johnson
Picture of Channel Side of Fort
Sumter
Channel side Bastion
Channel side Bastions
North Wall of Fort Sumter, 1865
Front of Fort Sumter,
Fort Sumter 1865
Looking back at Charleston Harbor
Fort Johnson
Fort Johnson is probably best
remembered today as the place
from which one signaling mortar
shell was fired—a shell that opened
the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
The ultimate appeal had been made
in the hitherto political conflict
between North and South, for that
one mortar shell symbolized the
appeal to force.
► In 1864 the fort saw its last military
encounter when a group of
confederates beat back and
captured a sizeable force of Union
troops. In the following year the
fort was evacuated. Slowly it fell
into rack and ruin.
►
Fort Moultrie
Fort Moultrie
►
In December 1860 South Carolina
seceded from the Union, and the Federal
garrison abandoned Fort Moultrie for the
stronger Sumter. Three and a half
months later, Confederate troops shelled
Sumter into submission, plunging the
nation into civil war. In April 1863,
Federal iron-clads and shore batteries
began a 20-month bombardment of
Sumter and Moultrie, yet Charleston’s
defenses held. When the Confederate
army evacuated the city in February
1865, Fort Sumter was little more than a
pile of rubble and Fort Moultrie lay
hidden under the band of sand that
protected its walls from Federal shells.
The new rifled cannon used during the
Civil War had demolished the brickwalled fortifications.
Fort Moultrie
The famous Floating Battery at
Sumter
Floating CSA Battery Charleston
►
Scene on the floating battery,
Charleston Harbor, during the
bombardment of Fort Sumter. A
very important factor in the
bombardment of Fort Sumter
was an immense floating
battery, which did effective work
in the silencing of the forts
guns. Major Anderson directed
many of his shots at the floating
battery; but while it was struck
fifteen or eighteen times, not
the slightest impression was
made upon its iron-cased sides
Casualties
►
Astonishingly, despite the thirty-four hours of fighting,
there were no fatalities on either side and only a few
injuries. Sadly, it was during the ceremony lowering the
American flag after the battle had concluded, that a loss of
life occurred. On the fiftieth firing of what was intended to
be a hundred salutes, the gun exploded, killing one soldier
instantly. Another soldier would die of his wounds a few
days later in a Charleston hospital; four other victims
recovered. The battle of Fort Sumter itself failed to predict
the enormous casualties that lay ahead; ironically, it was
the subsequent ceremony that glimpsed the awful future.