Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter is where the American Civil War began. In the pre-dawn hours of April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery ringing Charleston Harbor opened fire on the small Union garrison holding this unfinished brick fort — the first shots of a war that would claim more American lives than any other. The roughly 34-hour bombardment forced the fort's surrender without a single combat death, yet it shattered the last hope of a peaceful end to the secession crisis and rallied both North and South for four years of war.

Fort Sumter was conceived after the War of 1812, when the vulnerability of America's coastline prompted Congress to fund a chain of masonry sea forts known as the Third System. Work on Sumter — built on an artificial island of granite and rubble at the mouth of Charleston Harbor and named for Revolutionary War general Thomas Sumter — began in 1829 and dragged on for decades. It was still unfinished in December 1860, when South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union.

On the night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson secretly moved his U.S. Army garrison from the exposed Fort Moultrie across the harbor to the more defensible Sumter. For months the standoff simmered as the new Confederate government demanded the fort's evacuation and President Lincoln resolved to resupply it. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire. After roughly 34 hours of bombardment, his ammunition and provisions exhausted, Anderson surrendered on April 13 and evacuated the following day.

Confederate forces held Fort Sumter for most of the war, enduring one of the longest sieges in modern history as Union batteries and ironclads pounded it to rubble between 1863 and 1865. The Confederates finally abandoned the ruined fort in February 1865 as Sherman's army approached. On April 14, 1865 — four years to the day after the surrender — Anderson returned to raise the same flag he had lowered. Today the fort is preserved as part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, reachable only by boat.