Fort Sumter National Monument

In Charleston harbor lays a dilapidated mound of brick and concrete set upon a man-made island. Though only 3 stories tall at the time, and holding a scant 85 men, Fort Sumter towered in significance in late 1860 and early 1861, achieving a symbolism far out of proportion to it’s actual value. Debates can surge to and fro as to what “caused” the American Civil War, but history has a way of taking special note of that moment when the first shot is fired and noting who fired it. It is a watershed moment in the story of any conflict, the moment when debate and argument give way to violence and bloodshed – the moment between dialogue and destruction, negotiation and killing, peace and war.

With a certain poetry and irony, the attack on Fort Sumter set the tone for the awkwardness of the Civil War, a war where men who were close allies, friends and even family members on one day found themselves mortal enemies the next. Designed to protect Charleston harbor, it first came under fire from Charleston. The officer in charge of the Union garrison found himself being shot at by one of his former and favorite pupils. There were no casualties during the bombardment, which bloodlessly began the bloodiest war in US history.

Background
Practically all US coastal cities have forts. Philadelphia has Fort Mifflin. Baltimore has Fort McHenry. New York City has old Fort Wood, upon which the Statue of Liberty now stands. Charleston has Forts Sumter and Moultrie. These forts where built in the 1700s and 1800s to protect their cities from naval attack. In the days before air forces, a fully armed and manned fortress was a city’s first, last and best chance to defend itself from an enemy attack. Like US military bases today, US servicemen, not local inhabitants manned the forts.

The five-sided Fort Sumter was started in 1829. Like many federal projects in the south, slave labor was used for some of the grimiest jobs in building it. Work was slow, and the fort was still not entirely completed when, in 1860 it became the focal point of national attention. The storm clouds of conflict, which had been forming for as long as 40 years or longer, were about to break in Charleston harbor.

Election, Secession, Evacuation
In November of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16h president of the United States. Elected on a very mild anti-slavery platform (advocating its restriction, rather then its abolition) Lincoln won nearly every Northern state, while not even appearing on the ballot in some Southern states. In the minds of many Southerners, Lincoln’s election was a signal that the country was about to be greatly changed in ways they wanted no parts of.

On December 20th, 1860 South Carolina unanimously voted to secede from the Union, and did not even try to hide the fact that the perceived jeopardy of the institution of slavery was their chief cause. At that moment, the people of South Carolina considered themselves an independent country, and that US army troops on their soil were, by definition, trespassers.
US Army Major Robert Anderson was keenly aware of the danger to his command, and had to decide what to do about it. He was in charge of four federal installations around Charleston. Castle Pickney was near the city itself. Fort Johnson was on James Island, south of the city. Fort Sumter was out in the middle of the harbor. Anderson and most of his men were stationed at Fort Moultrie, on the north side of the harbor at Sullivan’s Island.

From his quarters at Moultrie, Anderson looked at his less-then-encouraging situation. With only 85 men, there was no hope of defending all 4 places. In fact, there wasn’t even any hope of defending Fort Moultrie. The fort was simply too big to be protected by a scant 85 men. Fort Sumter would surely be the easier fort to defend. On Christmas night, 1860, five days after the South Carolina seceded, Anderson secretly rowed his men out to Fort Sumter.

On December 27th, South Carolina militiamen manned all the other abandoned works, including the just-vacated Fort Moultrie –and pointed their weapons at Ft. Sumter.


The Beginning of War

Negotiation and Ultimatum
For nearly four months, South Carolina gunners glared at Sumter over the muzzles of their cannons. By February 1861, the South Carolinians were more properly known as Confederates, as several more states had decided to break away from the Union.

Demands from South Carolina and the Confederacy that the Ft. Sumter garrison be removed were refused. Ft. Sumter was a US Army installation, South Carolina was a US state, and president James Buchanan, (and later Lincoln) could not order a retreat from his own soil.

On March 4th, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president. Denying the right of any state to break away from the Union all states had created, Lincoln began looking into ways of reinforcing Anderson and his garrison. By April 4th, a reinforcement and re-supply task force had been assembled.

Learning of the expedition, the new Confederate government issued its first War Orders to the Confederate Commander in Charleston, Gen Pierre G.T. Beauregard on April 10th. Fort Sumter must be immediately evacuated and surrendered, or be fired upon. Beauregard transmitted the demand on April 11th to Anderson, his former instructor and mentor at West Point.

Although his fort was ringed by his new enemies at Forts Moultrie, Johnson, Castle Pickney, and several new batteries that the Confederates had built in the prior few months, Anderson refused the surrender. The surrender demand was generously repeated at 3:20 am on April 12, with the notification that this was the final offer. If refused, the fort would be attacked in an hour. Once more, Anderson resolutely stood his ground. No rebellious forces were going to get his fort without a fight.

In Charleston, the bells of St. Michael’s Church tolled 4:30 am.

Sumter’s Shell Storm
In Fort Johnson, Confederate Captain George James ordered one of his mortars to fire a single shell as a signal to the entire harbor. Fort Sumter at that hour appeared little more then a black mound in the bay, just discernable in the pre-dawn light. The large coastal gun boomed, sending its projectile into the April night. The shell hissed and fizzed as it drew an arc over Charleston harbor, ending directly above Fort Sumter, where it exploded twenty or so feet above the ramparts. Immediately, every cannon and mortar in Charleston harbor roared to life, countless shells shrieked towards Sumter. Explosions tore the airspace around the fort, and wreathed the structure in thick gray smoke. By 5:30 that morning, the eastern sun was rising on the first day of the American Civil War.



Fort Sumter had been designed to defend Charleston Harbor from outside invasion, not to defend itself against its sister forts. Sumter’s guns were mostly short rage, anti-ship weapons, and not anti-fort guns. From the beginning, Major Anderson knew he had only a slim chance of winning this battle. Since the fort had been all but abandoned before he had moved his command from Moultrie, there was not a great deal of ammunition for a proper fight. Anderson ordered token resistance, only shooting ten out of his sixty guns in self-defense. He strictly ordered his men not to man the heaviest guns he had, as they were on the forts upper level and crews would be completely exposed to enemy fire. The guns he did fire were in protected casemates in the lower two levels. Of all the Confederate batteries firing on him, his counter-fire could damage only Ft. Moultrie.

That same day, the relief expedition under former navy captain Gustavas Fox stood just outside the harbor. Fox had been ordered by Lincoln to relieve the fort, but lack of warship cover and high seas meant that he’d have to wait and try until the night of April 13th.

Fort Sumter was not going to hold out that long. The gunpowder and cartridge supply was dwindling, and the Confederates were setting the fort on fire by firing “hot-shot”, cannon balls preheated in a furnace before being fired from a cannon. The barracks, water supply tower and staircases were gone. Federal gunners were gasping for breath in the smoky casemates. Finally, as the bombardment reached it’s 33rd hour, Fort Sumter’s flagstaff was shot away. At 2 pm, Anderson agreed to a truce in the fighting. At 7pm on April 13th, 1861 the final terms of surrender and evacuation were agreed upon. The Fort would be evacuated, Anderson and his men would be free to leave and go north.

Nobody on either side had been killed or seriously wounded during the bombardment. Indeed, the only fatalities happened on April 14th, while the Union troops were firing a salute to their flag as it was being lowered. An accidental gunpowder explosion claimed two lives. Sadly, the ensuing Civil War, by then three days old, would claim more then 600,000 more.

Confederate Bastion
Fort Sumter now began its new career as a Confederate fort. For the next 4years, it would be an annoying thorn in the Union side, and of course, a proud symbol of southern defiance. Far more blood would be spilled by the Union trying to take back the fort, then had been shed trying to defend it in April 1861.
On April 7th, 1863, a navy attack was made with 9 heavily armored Union ships to attack the fort. It was hoped that the ironclad ships would be able to take the fire from the fort long enough to batter down the forts walls at point blank range. This turned out not to be so, and the ironclad attack failed. Five Union ships were disabled, one of which sunk.

On August 17th, 1863 heavy duty cannons were set up on Morris Island to the south of Sumter. Sumter was now under constant siege, and the walls of the fort were gradually weakened. But the fort was still manned by the Confederates.

On September 9th, a Union amphibious assault resulted in a bloody fiasco that cost the Union 5 boats and 124 men killed wounded and captured. The storming of Sumter failed spectacularly.

The siege went on, with Sumter being bombarded on and off for the rest of 1863 and 1864. By early 1865, the “fort” was little more then a pile of broken bricks, dirt and dust – manned by Confederate troops.

Fort Sumter –along with the rest of Charleston -- was finally abandoned by Confederate troops in February 1865 as the Union army under Gen William T Sherman cut off Charleston. Robert Anderson – now a General- raised the same flag over the ruins of his old fort that he had been forced to take down in 1861.

Later Uses for Fort Sumter
Post-Civil War, Fort Sumter saw service as a lighthouse. Then during the Spanish American war, the gigantic Battery Huger was built in the middle of the old fort’s parade ground. Two huge cannons, with rages of 9 miles, were placed there. Once again, Ft. Sumter was on guard against attack – an attack from the Spanish that never came. Sumter housed an anti-aircraft battery during World War II. Finally in 1948 it became a National Monument.


Touring Fort Sumter



Fort Sumter is of course only reachable by boat. The Visitor Center for the National Monument is actually at the ferry slip in downtown Charleston. This is on the eastern end of Calhoun St. Boats only leave a few times a day, giving visitors plenty of time to explore the exhibits in the museum. The museum does an admirable job of explaining the causes of tension, dissention, and disunion in the first half of the 1800s, with special focus on the institution of slavery. Not to be missed is the small model of Fort Sumter as it appeared in 1861, an imposing 3 story tall fortress.



The boat ride is perhaps 45 minutes to the fort. While in transit recorded messages on the ferryboats point out some interesting sights in Charleston harbor, including the Charleston Battery, Patriots Point, and Castle Pickney. The best place to stand is on the bow, where lucky passengers might catch a glimpse of dolphins playing by the prow of the boat!

The Fort itself can perhaps be a rude awakening for tourists. The impressive fort that guarded the harbor in 1861, was smashed to rubble by the Union during the course of the war. The fort was never rebuilt to its antebellum glory. Now it’s about a story and a half tall, and has only few traces of the casemates and guns that were manned by Anderson’s men.





The gigantic black mass of Battery Huger dominates the interior of the fort, and makes it very difficult for a visitor to mentally put himself back in 1861. Remember, unlike Gettysburg or Antietam, which had brief, bloody moments of fame, Fort Sumter was a US Army installation well into the 20th Century, and was thus changed to serve changing Army needs, with little thought given to preservation.

The guns of Battery Huger are long gone, and the mass of poured concrete now houses a museum. Visitors have about an hour to tour the fort, which is almost enough time for the very interested. The Ranger talk describing the opening bombardment cuts into touring time, but was in my case, worth it.



Much of the fort is ruins, with exhibits explaining how they became ruined. Tourists can visit the remains of the powder magazine, and the casemates on the left face, right face, and left flank.

Two monuments are key to the Sumter story – one for the Union garrison that defended it in 1861, and one for the Confederates that held it under siege from 1861 to 1865. There’s also a small exhibit on the Right Gorge Angle that describes the infantry attack in September 1863.




The viewer’s eyes will be drawn to the assembly of six flags that flutter in the harbor breeze. One is the US Flag of 1861, with 33 stars, similar to the flag that Anderson flew. Next to it is the First National Confederate Flag, the “Stars ‘n’ Bars” with its 3 large stripes. Then comes the South Carolina State flag. This flagpole has a red band around the pole to signify how high the fortress’s walls used to be. The next flag is the Second National Confederate Flag, the “Stainless Banner”. Completing the arc of five flags is the 1865 US Flag with its 35 stars, which was flow above the fort when it was recaptured. In the center of this arc is the largest and grandest flag of them all, a contemporary, 50 star, US Flag.


Fort Sumter is famous –and thus oft visited- because of its status as the beginning place of the Civil War. Interestingly, and perhaps disappointingly, it has later stories to tell, such as the Confederate occupation of it, and it’s Spanish American War History. The varying stories conflict, and crowd each other on this tiny man made island.

Fort Sumter will always be compared with Lexington and Pearl Harbor – a place where words, threats and diplomacy ultimately failed and the place where violence began. Thus it’s worthy of study to any historian, professional or amateur.

National Park Service's Website on Fort Sumpter

http://www.nps.gov/fosu/index.htm