Originally aired on April 17, 1998 - In part 190 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses the April 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter that began the bloodiest war in the nation’s history.
#190 – Fort Sumter
A more unlikely place to start a war would be difficult to find. Everything about Fort Sumter, South Carolina was a bit odd. It stood on a man-made island at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. Granite brought from New England formed the base of the island. The Carolina fort was named for Thomas Sumter a transplanted Virginian.
Work on the fort began in 1829 and for the next thirty-one years the War Department lazily constructed a genuinely formidable installation. The fort stood on two and half acres of land. It contained five million bricks with walls fifty feet high and as much as five feet thick. Three tiers of gun emplacements were designed to hold sixty-six cannon.
Yet when South Carolina left the Union in December, 1860, the fort was only three fourths completed. It was in shambles. Only fifteen cannon were in position. Powder and shells lay scattered in piles along with building materials that had not been used. Even worse, the fort was built to withstand attacks from the ocean. It had little defense on the land side.
This was the installation to which Major Robert Anderson and seventy-seven Federal soldiers took refuge on the night after Christmas, 1860. Anderson’s garrison had been at Fort Moultrie. An obsolete post on the northern lip of Charleston Harbor. With no defense against an attack by land and with Charlestonians anxious to remove Federal soldiers from their presence Anderson shifted his men to Fort Sumter.
Robert Anderson was then fifty-five. A native of Kentucky and West Point graduate. He was married to a Georgia native and he owned slaves. Yet Anderson was a professional soldier. Dedicated to the stars and stripes and pledged to do his duty. But he did not realize until after the fact that Fort Sumter was an island prison to which no one could gain entrance and from which no one could escape. Anderson had effectively cut himself off. Not merely from the mainland, but from the Federal government upon which he depended for orders and for life.
In the weeks that followed, South Carolinians mobilized for war. Boisterous crowds swarmed through the streets of Charleston and chanted for action. Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard in charge of the campaign against Sumter carefully placed fifty-one cannon on the land areas encircling the fort. Confederates then waited for hunger to force Anderson’s little band to surrender.
Early in April, 1861, President Lincoln announced that he was sending an unarmed boat with supplied to the Union garrison. This brought the crisis to its final point. When one side is engaged in siege operations and using starvation as its chief weapon food then assumes the same military importance as ammunition. And so long as the American flag flew over Fort Sumter the South’s claim to independence was self-evident fiction.
At 4:30 am on April 12th, Confederate cannon opened fire. Major Anderson had been given ample warning of the bombardment. His men stayed under cover except to respond with an occasional artillery shot. For thirty-four hours more than three thousand shells exploded over the fort or slammed into its walls.
By the morning of April 14th, fires inside the fort were out of control. Provisions were gone. No help was in sight. Anderson saw nothing left to defend but honor itself. The Federal garrison surrendered. Astoundingly no casualties had occurred during the long bombardment. Two Union soldiers died in an accident when the American flag was being lowered. Later that day a Union vessel carrying Anderson and his men passed silently out of Charleston Harbor. Confederate soldiers lining the beaches removed their hats in salute. Thus began the bloodiest war in the nation’s history.