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1861 – After a thirty-three hour bombardment by Confederate cannon, Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor surrenders. The first engagement of the war ended in Rebel victory. The surrender concluded a standoff that began with South Carolina’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. When President Lincoln sent word to Charleston in early April that he planned to send food to the beleaguered garrison, the Confederates took action. They opened fire on Sumter in the predawn of April 12. Over the next day, nearly 4,000 rounds were hurled toward the black silhouette of Fort Sumter. Inside Sumter was its commander, Major Robert Anderson, 9 officers, 68 enlisted men, 8 musicians, and 43 construction workers who were still putting the finishing touches on the fort. Captain Abner Doubleday, the man often inaccurately credited with inventing the game of baseball, returned fire nearly two hours after the barrage began. By the morning of April 13, the garrison in Sumter was in dire straits. The soldiers had sustained only minor injuries, but they could not hold out much longer. The fort was badly damaged, and the Confederate’s shots were becoming more precise. Around noon, the flagstaff was shot away. Louis Wigfall, a former U.S. senator from Texas, rowed out without permission to see if the garrison was trying to surrender. Anderson decided that further resistance was futile, and he ran a white flag up a makeshift flagpole. The first engagement of the war was over, and the only casualty had been a Confederate horse. The Union force was allowed to leave for the north; before leaving, the soldiers fired a 100-gun salute. During the salute, one soldier was killed and another mortally wounded by a prematurely exploding cartridge. The Civil War had officially begun.
Fort Sumter - American Civil War - HISTORY.com
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Civil War
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We did a reenactment for the 150th anniversary of this in conjunction the with the National Park Service. Representing the regular Heavy Artillery garrisons, civilian construction workers, and family members of both Fts Moultrie and Sumter, CivWar reenactors left Ft Moultrie and moved to Ft Sumter. We manned the surviving guns, drilled, interacted w/hundreds of park visitors (while freezing at night) for the weekend.
Dubbed "to prevent the effusion of blood" after Maj Anderson's justification to evacuate from undefendable Moultrie, the event made local news but surprisingly no national news groups noticed.
We all had to buy or acquire if necessary, tricked out Hardee hats and dark blue regular army trousers to substitute our normal battered headgear and light blue infantry trousers but it was a great event!
Dubbed "to prevent the effusion of blood" after Maj Anderson's justification to evacuate from undefendable Moultrie, the event made local news but surprisingly no national news groups noticed.
We all had to buy or acquire if necessary, tricked out Hardee hats and dark blue regular army trousers to substitute our normal battered headgear and light blue infantry trousers but it was a great event!
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SFC Charles Temm
SP5 Mark Kuzinski - I froze in many places both while active Army and as a reenactor, I think Sumter was one of the coldest as all we had was one or 2 period blankets and we slept in the casemates on the ocean side (to the left of the WW2 command bunker).
But it was cool to do (irony unintentional). I was part of the flag detail raising the colors and it's the only time I was pulled off my feet while doing so. That huge garrison sized flag lifted 2 of us into the air prior to to her actually being hoisted, that was weird!
We even had the the garrison scramble to the guns when the Citadel cadets fired on a ship portraying the Star of the West. The tourists freaked out when everyone scrambled to shut the sally port doors and ran about grabbing muskets and rammers.
But it was cool to do (irony unintentional). I was part of the flag detail raising the colors and it's the only time I was pulled off my feet while doing so. That huge garrison sized flag lifted 2 of us into the air prior to to her actually being hoisted, that was weird!
We even had the the garrison scramble to the guns when the Citadel cadets fired on a ship portraying the Star of the West. The tourists freaked out when everyone scrambled to shut the sally port doors and ran about grabbing muskets and rammers.
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In 1860-61 there was a good deal of sentiment in the north to just let the 'so-called' seceding states go. President Lincoln walked the tight rope and got the secessionists to fire the first shot and thereby cook their own goose.
Walt
Walt
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Capt Walter Miller
President Lincoln, 7/4/61:
"And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy--a government of the people by the same people--can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?
So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government and so to resist force employed for its destruction by force for its preservation.
The call was made, and the response of the country was most gratifying, surpassing in unanimity and spirit the most sanguine expectation. Yet none of the States commonly called slave States, except Delaware gave a regiment through regular State organization. A few regiments have been organized within some others of those States by individual enterprise and received into the Government service. Of course the seceded States, so called (and to which Texas had been joined about the time of the inauguration), gave no troops to the cause of the Union. The border States, so called, were not uniform in their action, some of them being almost for the Union, while in others, as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, the Union sentiment was nearly repressed and silenced. The course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable, perhaps the most important. A convention elected by the people of that State to consider this very question of disrupting the Federal Union was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort Sumter fell. To this body the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men. Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter many members of that majority went over to the original disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the State from the Union. Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter or their great resentment at the Government's resistance to that assault is not definitely known. Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month distant, the convention and the legislature (which was also in session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State not members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State were already out of the Union. They pushed military preparations vigorously forward all over the State. They seized the United States armory at Harpers Ferry and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk. They received--perhaps invited--into their State large bodies of troops, with their warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded States. They formally entered into a treaty of temporary alliance and cooperation with the so-called "Confederate States," and sent members to their congress at Montgomery; and, finally, they permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their capital at Richmond."
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=69802
"And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy--a government of the people by the same people--can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?
So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government and so to resist force employed for its destruction by force for its preservation.
The call was made, and the response of the country was most gratifying, surpassing in unanimity and spirit the most sanguine expectation. Yet none of the States commonly called slave States, except Delaware gave a regiment through regular State organization. A few regiments have been organized within some others of those States by individual enterprise and received into the Government service. Of course the seceded States, so called (and to which Texas had been joined about the time of the inauguration), gave no troops to the cause of the Union. The border States, so called, were not uniform in their action, some of them being almost for the Union, while in others, as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, the Union sentiment was nearly repressed and silenced. The course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable, perhaps the most important. A convention elected by the people of that State to consider this very question of disrupting the Federal Union was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort Sumter fell. To this body the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men. Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter many members of that majority went over to the original disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the State from the Union. Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter or their great resentment at the Government's resistance to that assault is not definitely known. Although they submitted the ordinance for ratification to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month distant, the convention and the legislature (which was also in session at the same time and place), with leading men of the State not members of either, immediately commenced acting as if the State were already out of the Union. They pushed military preparations vigorously forward all over the State. They seized the United States armory at Harpers Ferry and the navy-yard at Gosport, near Norfolk. They received--perhaps invited--into their State large bodies of troops, with their warlike appointments, from the so-called seceded States. They formally entered into a treaty of temporary alliance and cooperation with the so-called "Confederate States," and sent members to their congress at Montgomery; and, finally, they permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their capital at Richmond."
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=69802
Abraham Lincoln: Special Session Message - July 4, 1861
The American Presidency Project contains the most comprehensive collection of resources pertaining to the study of the President of the United States. Compiled by John Woolley and Gerhard Peters
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Capt Walter Miller
"What is now combated is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution--is lawful and peaceful . It is not contended that there is any express law for it, and nothing should ever be implied as law which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased with money the countries out of which several of these States were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding States in common with the rest. Is it just either that creditors shall go unpaid or the remaining States pay the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself?"
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