At the entrance to Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean is Fort Sumter, a powerful symbol of one of the greatest challenges this country ever faced. One of many forts constructed along the Atlantic coast by the federal government, Fort Sumter’s purpose was to defend Charleston from foreign invasion. In reality, the fort would be the flashpoint in a war between Americans where the nature of the Union and the meaning of freedom would be changed forever.
In 1829 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to build Fort Sumter on a shoal, or submerged sandbar, in Charleston Harbor. The island itself was constructed of 70,000 tons of granite and other rock brought by sea from New England. By 1860, thirty-one years later, Fort Sumter was 90% complete. But while the fort was being built, a divisive sectionalism was growing in the country.
The years leading up to the opening shots of the Civil War were marked by a series of escalating crises and hard-fought compromises. From arguments at the 1787 Constitutional Convention about closing the international slave trade in 1808, to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and the Nullification of 1832, the political battles centered on protecting regional economic interests. The Compromise of 1850 with its more restrictive Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that resulted in “Bleeding Kansas,” the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry were among the complex string of incidents that haunted the country.
Underlying all the economic, political and social arguments was the issue of slavery. Should slavery be allowed in the new western territories? Shouldn’t slaveholders be allowed to take their human property into new states, just as they had taken them into Ohio or New York? If the federal government could outlaw slavery in the new territories, couldn’t the federal government also outlaw it in Southern states where it formed the basis of the economy? What about states’ rights and dearly valued individual property rights? Southerners argued that the Constitutional compact guaranteed slavery. Political and religious leaders played on racial fears to win support from non-slaveholding whites. As the abolitionist movement grew in popularity, southerners feared that their way of life was being threatened.
In November 1860 the presidential election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln without a single electoral vote from the South signaled that secession was imminent in South Carolina. The Republican Party stood for non-expansion of slavery, not for its abolition. Southerners who advocated States' Rights saw this as a serious threat to their standard of living. South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860. The Secession Convention’s vote was unanimous. Soon five more states followed: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana.
At the time, there were four United States fortifications in the Charleston area: Fort Johnson, Fort Sumter, Castle Pinckney, and Fort Moultrie. Of the four only Fort Moultrie was garrisoned, with 85 officers and enlisted men commanded by Major Robert Anderson. But the fort was in need of major repairs, and Anderson considered it indefensible.
Under the cover of darkness on the night of December 26, 1860, Major Anderson moved his garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter was the safest and most defensible position he could hold against attack with his limited number of men and supplies. Charlestonians were outraged and within a few days, South Carolina militia had seized all federal property in the area except Fort Sumter.
Meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, the six seceded states formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was elected as President of the newly formed nation. Almost all federal property including arsenals, forts, and navy yards within the seceded states were seized by state authorities. Texas was the seventh state to secede and was admitted into the Confederacy in March 1861. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina would secede after the Civil War began.
Though incomplete, Fort Sumter was still an impressive fortification. The pentagon-shaped building had five-foot thick walls that towered more than 50 feet above the water at low tide. Although Fort Sumter may have been the best location for Major Anderson and his men, the fort’s defenses could only offer token resistance. Of the 135 guns planned for the fort, only 15 were mounted. On the parade ground lay 66 cannon barrels, gun carriages, and 5,600 shot and shell. For the next three months Anderson and his command prepared Fort Sumter for combat. But by April 12, a total of only 60 cannon stood ready.
While the Federals strengthened their defenses, Confederate forces could be seen building batteries and mounting cannon along the harbor’s shoreline. Forty-three southern cannon were trained on Fort Sumter and more than 3,500 Confederate soldiers manned Charleston Harbor defenses.
By early April the Federals were nearly out of food, and would soon be starved into surrender if not re-supplied. President Lincoln ordered the navy to sail for Charleston and attempt to re-supply Major Anderson with provisions and additional troops. The Confederate government in Montgomery, Alabama, aware of the expedition, debated a course of action. They decided not to permit the re-supplying of Fort Sumter.
Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard was ordered to demand the fort’s evacuation and to take Fort Sumter by force if Anderson refused. On the afternoon of April 11, 1861, Anderson received the ultimatum from Beauregard. Major Anderson refused, stating that his garrison would be starved out by April 15th. But with Union supply ships expected at any moment, the reply was considered unacceptable. Major Anderson was informed that Confederate forces would soon open fire on Fort Sumter.
At 4:30 A.M., on April 12, 1861, with the first Union supply ships at the Charleston Harbor’s entrance, a mortar shell was fired from Fort Johnson. It exploded directly over Fort Sumter, signaling all Confederate guns bearing on the fort to open fire. The American Civil War had begun.
The bombardment of Fort Sumter lasted 34 hours, with the Confederates firing more than 3,000 projectiles at the fort. Anderson had just 85 soldiers who had to work the guns in shifts, meaning only 9 or 10 of his 60 guns could even return fire. During the second day of the battle, artillery fire from Moultrie set his officers’ quarters and enlisted men’s barracks on fire. With so few men, Anderson could not fight the fire and the Confederates at the same time. On that afternoon arrangements were made for Anderson to surrender the fort.
On April 14, 1861, Confederate forces occupied Sumter, allowing Anderson and his men to withdraw to New York aboard a Union supply ship. For the South, Fort Sumter was sacred ground where the first shot in the war for southern independence was fired. For the North, it was the place where secession and disloyalty to the Union had escalated into armed rebellion.
For the next two years, as great battles were being fought in Virginia and Tennessee, Charleston Harbor remained relatively quiet. But just outside the harbor, U.S. Navy ships had formed a blockade to keep southern cargo vessels from using Charleston’s port.
But on April 7, 1863, the war returned when nine federal gunboats attacked Forts Sumter and Moultrie. After 2 ½ hours the artillery duel was over, leaving the Federals defeated.
Realizing a greater effort would be required to seize Charleston, Northern troops advanced on Morris Island, located beyond Fort Sumter on the south side of the harbor’s entrance. On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment led an assault against Battery Wagner. This was one of the first African American units to see action in the United States military. The assault on Battery Wagner was featured in the film Glory. In early September 1863, after nearly two and a half months of federal bombardment, Southern forces abandoned Morris Island. The Union then used the island as a base to bombard Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and Charleston with their newer and more powerful rifled artillery.
Over the course of the next 20 months, an estimated seven million pounds of artillery projectiles, about 44,000 in all, were fired at Fort Sumter. This tremendous effort to destroy the fort proved unsuccessful. Even though the top two levels were reduced to rubble, Confederate forces defiantly held Fort Sumter. During the siege Confederate soldiers and slaves used sandbags, cotton bales, timbers and brick rubble to strengthen the fort’s walls. This was the longest siege of the Civil War, and among the longest anywhere in modern warfare.
Finally, on February 17, 1865, Confederate forces evacuated Fort Sumter. General William T. Sherman’s Union army, marching from Savannah, Georgia to Columbia, South Carolina, cut off Charleston’s communications and supply routes, forcing the Confederate troops to abandon the area.
With the return of United States troops to Fort Sumter, work began to repair the battered brick structure. A small percentage of the fort was rebuilt and other sections repaired, mostly during the 1870s. Today most of the visible brickwork is original.
From 1876 to 1897 Fort Sumter was not garrisoned, and primarily served as a lighthouse station. But the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 brought new life to the fort. The army constructed Battery Huger in the middle of Fort Sumter as part of the overall upgrade of U.S. coastal defenses. Used through World War I and World War II, this reinforced concrete battery still dominates the fort’s interior.
By the end of World War II, technological advances made static seacoast defense systems obsolete. And in 1947, after 87 years service, Fort Sumter was deactivated, and later became Fort Sumter National Monument, part of the National Park System.
