The Battle of Fort Sumter

Podcast Transcript

On April 12, 1861, the United States Civil War began when Confederate forces began a bombardment of the Union held Fort Sumter at the mouth of the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina.

The battle was not itself a great battle, and the number of casualties was shockingly small, but what it began totally changed the lives of millions of people and the course of the United States.

Learn more about the Battle of Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Battle of Fort Sumter didn’t occur in a vacuum. There was a reason why it occurred when it did and where it did.

The first thing to understand is the events that took place during the lead-up to the battle.

The Election of 1860, which I’ve covered in a previous episode, was the most important election in United States history. The fate of the country literally depended on the results of the election.

Tensions between the North and the South had been escalating for years, and many people, especially in the South, thought that the election was the last chance to stay in the union.

When Abraham Lincoln won the election handily over the Southern candidate, John C. Breckinridge, southern states felt that now was the time to leave.

Just six weeks after the election and three months before Lincoln’s inauguration, South Carolina took the first step. On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina legislature passed a resolution announcing its secession from the United States.

South Carolina was the most pro-slavery of the southern states and had been so since the revolution, so it was no surprise that they were the first to leave the union.

Once South Carolina seceded, the damn burst. By February 1, seven states had declared their secession, and on February 8, they formed the Confederate States of America.

As with any divorce, dividing up the assets was difficult. In particular, there were military forts that the Union Army still occupied.

After secession, the southern states sized most of the federal buildings and military fortifications in their states.

However, they weren’t able to seize all of them.

Charleston, South Carolina, was perhaps the most important port in the Confederacy, making the control of it vital to both the South and the North

The Port of Charleston was one of the busiest and most important ports in the South before the Civil War. It was a hub for the export of cotton, rice, and other goods, which were crucial for the Southern economy.

If war was to break out with the North, the port would become even more important for the Confederacy’s efforts to trade with European nations, particularly for obtaining arms, ammunition, and other supplies.

However, there was a problem. There were two Union-occupied forts that controlled the mouth of Charleston Harbor.

One fort was Fort Moultrie, which was located on a peninsula jutting into the harbor connected to the mainland. The other was Fort Sumter, which was located on an island at the mouth of the harbor.

Fort Sumter was part of a series of coastal fortifications built by the United States following the War of 1812. The war had exposed the vulnerability of the U.S. coastline to foreign attacks, prompting the government to construct a network of forts to protect important harbors. Fort Sumter, located on an artificial island in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, was designed to guard the entrance to the harbor. In fact, it was designed to be an impregnable fortress.

Construction of the fort began in 1829, but progress was slow due to issues with funding and the challenge of building on an artificial island. By 1860, Fort Sumter was still not fully completed, although it was structurally sound enough to be used as a military installation.

The commander of the Union forces in Charleston at the end of 1860 was Major Robert Anderson.

On December 26, just days after South Carolina announced its departure, Major Anderson decided to move his troops from the less defensible Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter. Anderson’s move was a strategic attempt to secure a more defensible position in the face of growing tensions. Upon leaving, he spiked the guns to render them unusable and burned all the carriages in the fort.

Anderson was appointed as the commander that fall because it was felt he could better handle what was coming than the previous commander who was near retirement.

Anderson’s instinct to abandon Fort Moultrie and move to Fort Sumter was correct. The South Carolinians felt that they would inevitably take over the fort.

As soon as the Union forces left, they took over all of the abandoned forts along the harbor.

On December 30, the South Carolinians took over the Union arsenal, which led to the seizure of 22,000 weapons.

They began sending ships to observe troop movements in the fort and threatened to bombard the fort once they had set up the guns taken from the former Union fortifications in the city.

In early January, President James Buchanan, who was still the president until Lincoln’s inauguration in March, sent a supply ship to Fort Sumter.

The ship, named the Star of the West, was a civilian merchant ship, not a military vessel. However, as the ship entered the harbor on January 9th, several shore batteries fired on the ship forcing it to retreat.

For the next several months, the Union troops at Fort Sumter were in a standoff with the South Carolina militia, which surrounded them.

Conditions in the fort were difficult. Fort Sumter’s garrison had only 85 men, and they were vastly outnumbered. Food had to be rationed, and the soldiers were put to work on finishing the fort’s defenses, which had yet to be completed.

On March 1, command of the siege was given to Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard. Beauregard was the first general to be appointed by Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

He was appointed to the rank of general for the specific purpose of commanding the siege of Fort Sumter.

Beauregard repeated the demands to Major Anderson that he surrender or abandon the fort and also began increasing the training of the militia units in the city so they could operate the guns.

In an odd twist of fate, Major Anderson was General Beauregar’s artillery instructor at the West Point Military Academy.

On March 4, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President. One of the first things he was told when becoming president was that Fort Sumter only had six weeks worth of supplies left.

The fort became a bargaining chip in the first weeks of the Lincoln administration. Virginia had initially voted against secession, and Lincoln offered to turn the fort over if Virginia would stay in the union. He said, “A state for a fort is no bad business.”

By early April, things were getting dire inside the fort. Lincoln proposed another supply mission, but this time, he would bring in military support. If the merchant ship were prevented from landing, then the the army would come in to deliver supplies and to land more troops.

On April 6, Lincoln sent notice to South Carolina Governor Francis Wilkinson Pickens that the supply mission would take place and that he should not interfere.

The notice of the supply mission accelerated everything. General Beauregard issued a final ultimatum for the surrender of the fort. When Anderson didn’t agree to Beauregar’s terms, the die was cast.

At 4:30 am on Friday, April 12, 1861, the Southern forces opened fire on the fort.

While the Union forces were vastly outmanned and outgunned, they managed to fire a few shots in return. The Union officer who supposedly fired the first shots was Captain Abner Doubleday, the same man who, according to legend, invented baseball.

The Confederates had 19 coastal batteries that were firing on the fort. They managed to fire 3000 rounds over a span of 34 hours.

By the next day, April 13, the five-foot thick walls of the fort had been breached, the Union forces were out of ammunition, and fires were breaking out in the fort.

Major Anderson eventually accepted the inevitable and surrendered to General Beauregard at 2 pm.

Shockingly enough, despite 3000 rounds and 34 hours of shelling, no one was killed during the entire battle. However, two men died on April 14 when the fort fired an artillery salute during the formal surrender ceremony.

After the surrender of the fort, the Confederacy took control and began making repairs and finishing the construction the Union never completed.

When news of the fall of Fort Sumter spread, it mobilized both the North and the South. Now that war was finally here, President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to be mobilized.

There was so much interest that the 75,000 quota was met almost immediately. In response to Lincoln raising troops, four more states announced they were seceding and joined the Confederacy.

Charleston became the most heavily fortified harbor in the Confederacy and was a major obstacle to the Union’s Operation Anaconda, which was their plan to place a sea blockade on the entire sout.

From 1863 to 1865, Union forces launched several attempts to recapture Fort Sumter. The most notable of these was the bombardment campaign that began in August 1863.

The Union assault on Fort Sumter began on August 17, 1863, when Union artillery positioned on Morris Island, just outside the harbor, and ironclad warships in Charleston Harbor commenced a heavy bombardment. The goal was to reduce the fort to rubble, making it indefensible.

Over the following days and months, Fort Sumter was subjected to one of the most intense bombardments of the Civil War. The Union forces, under the command of Major General Quincy A. Gillmore, used rifled cannons, which were more accurate and powerful than earlier artillery. The bombardment continued sporadically for over a year, with particularly heavy shelling occurring in August and September 1863.

By the end of September, the once-formidable fort was reduced to a pile of rubble. Despite this, the Confederate defenders, commanded by Colonel Alfred Rhett and later Major Stephen Elliott Jr., managed to hold the fort. They constructed makeshift defenses within the ruins, turning it into a symbol of Confederate resilience.

Despite the Confederate success in keeping the fort out of Union hands, it actually might have backfired in the long run. Because the Union couldn’t take the fort by sea, they resorted to taking it by land.

After General William Tecumseh Sherman had completed his march to the sea, he moved north and marched to Charleston. On February 17, 1865, the city was evacuated and occupied by the Union.

On the day after the city was occupied, the Union once again occupied Fort Sumter.

After the war, Fort Sumter remained a military fort, but its strategic importance had diminished. It remained occupied until the early 20th century when it became a historical site. In 1948, it was designated as a National Monument, managed by the National Park Service.

In previous episodes, I made the distinction between important battles and great battles, which are not always or usually the same thing.

The Battle of Fort Sumter was not a great battle insofar as there were zero casualties, and the fight was entirely lopsided. No great military tactics or strategy were on display.

However, it was an extremely important battle insofar as it was the spark that ignited the American Civil War.