militaryhistory

On December 26, 1860, five days after South Carolina seceeded from the Union, A U.S. Army Major, by the name of  Robert Anderson moved his garrison from the indefensible Fort Moultrie and secretly relocated his two companies (127 men, 13 of them musicians) of the 1st U.S. Artillery to Fort Sumter. He did this without official authorization or obedience to orders from Washington. He thought that providing a stronger defense would delay a Rebel attack. The Fort was not yet complete at the time and fewer than half of the cannons that should have been there were available due to military downsizing by James Buchanan. Ironically the newly formed Confederate government would view this move as an act of hostility. Over the next few months, repeated calls for the United States to evacuate Fort Sumter from the government of South Carolina and later Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard were ignored. Attempts to resupply and reinforce the garrison were repulsed on January 9, 1861 when the first shots of the war stopped the steamer Star of the West, a ship hired by the United States to transport troops and supplies to Fort Sumter, from completing the task. After realizing that Anderson’s command would run out of food by April 15, 1861, President Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships, under the command of Gustavus V. Fox, to attempt a forced entry into Charleston Harbor to reinforce Fort Sumter. The ships assigned were the steam sloop-of-war USS Pawnee, steam sloop-of-war USS Powhatan, transporting motorized launches and about 300 sailors (secretly removed from the Charleston fleet to join in the forced reenforcement of Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Fla.), armed screw steamer USS Pocahontas, Revenue Cutter USS Harriet Lane, steamer Baltic transporting about 200 troops, composed of companies C and D of the 2nd U.S. Artillery, and three hired tug boats. By April 6, 1861 the first ships began to set sail for their rendezvous off the Charleston Bar. The first to arrive, the Harriet Lane, arriving before midnight of April 11, 1861

1861, inside the fort flying the Confederate Flag

On April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate batteries opened fire, the bombardment continued for 33 straight hours, on the fort. Edmund Ruffin, noted Virginian agronomist and secessionist, claimed that he fired the first shot on Fort Sumter. His story has been widely believed, but Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, commanding a battery of two mortars on James Island fired the first shot at 4:30 A.M. The garrison returned fire, but it had no effect. In part because Major Anderson did not use the guns mounted on the highest tier, the barbette tier, where the gun detachments would be more exposed to Confederate fire. On April13th , Anderson surrendered the fort. During the attack, the Union colors fell. Lt. Norman J. Hall risked life and limb to put them back up, burning off his eyebrows permanently. No Union soldiers died in the actual battle though a Confederate soldier bled to death having been wounded by a misfiring cannon. One Union soldier died and another was mortally wounded during the 27th shot of a 100 shot salute, allowed by the Confederacy. Afterwards the salute was shortened to 50 shots. Accounts, such as in the famous diary of Mary Chesnut, describe Charleston residents along what is now known as The Battery, sitting on balconies and drinking salutes to the start of the hostilities.

The hostilities proir to the fall of Fort Sumter, and now the seizure of a federal installation had opened wounds that could only healed by the spilling of blood. One person said that all of the blood that was to be spilled during this conflict would be cleaned up with one hankerchief. This was a terrible miscalculation. The Cvil war would kill approximately 600,000 lives, and these were only military numbers. No one knows the numbers of civilians who perished in the conflict, particularly in the south where the war was executed.

The west, Missouri,  Arkansas and Kansas were rife with guerilla warfare as pro-slavery rebels clashed with anti-slavery factions. Governments in many southern states split into two, one part confederate and another part union. Before the war ended it would touch nearly every person who lived in the United States.