The morning of April 12, 1861 was a morning that changed the world as we know it. Before dawn’s early light on the that fateful morning, Confederate forces under General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard opened fire on the besieged union garrison of Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
The niceties of 19th century warfare had, of course, been met. Negotiations for the surrender of Fort Sumter had been ongoing since the day before, when Brigadier General Beauregard, first General officer of the Confederate States of America, demanded the Fort’s surrender. Having been unsupplied for months, Major Robert Anderson, United States Army, knew he was running out of time. He informed Beauregard an hour past midnight on the 12th that he would surrender the Fort by April 15 unless he received new orders or was resupplied. That wasn’t good enough for General Beauregard, and at 3:20 A.M., the General informed Anderson that he would open fire on the Fort in one hour. In a world where the sneak attack has become commonplace and you’re more likely to learn you’re under attack by watching Fox News, such notice seems a relic of a past age to our modern eyes.
It’s hard to imagine what it must have felt like to be on either side of this situation. Americans pointing cannon at Americans, negotiating for the surrender of men who had, until just a few months before, been fellow countrymen. For Anderson and the men who garrisoned Fort Sumter, that hour and ten minutes, from 3:20 to 4:30 when the shelling began, must have seemed like an eternity.
The crisis had begun months earlier when South Carolina seceded from the union. It came to a head a week earlier when, recognizing that the Fort’s garrison was starving, President Lincoln had dispatched a relief expedition on April 4. Lincoln, ever desiring to avert a crisis, informed South Carolina’s Governor Francis Pickens of the fleet’s peaceful nature and intention to resupply the garrison. Pickens duly informed Beauregard, who was ordered by Confederate provisional President Jefferson Davis to prevent the supplied from reaching Anderson’s starving men. The Confederate cabinet had met five days and endorsed Davis’ decision to demand the Fort’s surrender or reduce it to rubble. Only one member of the cabinet, Secretary of State Robert Toombs, dissented.
The die was cast and the Civil War began. The bombardment lasted for two days, until the Fort surrendered on April 14th. In the first of many unfortunate ironies, not a man was killed on either side during the bombardment – it wasn’t until the Federal forces began a 100 gun salute to the American flag before it was hauled down that an errant spark caused an explosion that killed one man, mortally wounded another, and injured an entire gun crew. The first direct casualties of the Civil War were an accident. A fitting start to one of the greatest tragedies in American history. And like many tragedies, this one had a silver lining. This war, which would be the most devastating in American history, gave our nation a new birth of freedom and cleansed us of the scourge of slavery, strengthened our federal system and gave us a new identity that was wholly American. Many men gave their lives to make a better world for all of us, and their sacrifice was not in vain.
Remember Fort Sumter, 150 years ago today.
Check out the story on our companion blog, written from a contemporary perspective, Damn the Torpedoes.
