Following the War of 1812, it was decided to construct a series of forts along the southern part of the American east coast to protect the various harbors that would be otherwise vulnerable to attack from a foreign power. One of these was Fort Sumter, located at the mouth of the Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.
Construction began in 1827, but was still unfinished in 1860. It was a five-sided brick structure with walls five feet thick. It towered fifty feet over the low tide mark, and could garrison up to 650 men and 135 guns in three tiers of gun emplacements.
After Abraham Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860, the South Carolina legislature adopted an ordinance of secession from the Union. By February, 1861 six more southern states followed suite, and on February 7th, the seven states adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America. The eight remaining slave states at this time refused to join them.
The Confederates seized several of the federal forts. President Buchanan (Lincoln had not yet been sworn in) protested, but no action was taken. An attempt was made to resupply Fort Sumter by sea, but the ship was unarmed and was driven off by artillery manned by cadets from the nearby military academy "Citadel".
Following Lincoln's inauguration, the South sent delegates to Washington and offered to pay for the seized federal forts, and also offered to sign a peace treaty with the United States.
But Lincoln's attitude was that the secession was illegal and that a signing of a peace treaty would constitute a recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign country.
In the meantime, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson who was in charge of the federal harbor garrison, moved his tiny force of 85 men under cover of darkness from the indefensible Fort Moultrie on the north side of the harbor to Fort Sumter and the comfort of its thick walls and its guns -- although there were not enough men to man all of the guns.
In March 1861, Jefferson Davis, the new President of the new Confederacy, appointed the very first Confederate general officer. He was Brig. General P.G.T. Beauregard and he was appointed to be the military commander of South Carolina forces in Charleston.
Beauregard made repeated demands to Anderson that the garrison at Fort Sumter should either surrender or withdraw, and took steps to make sure that the fort could not be either reinforced or resupplied.
He finally dispatched aides to the fort on April 11th and issued an ultimatum.
Anderson refused.
Further discussions after midnight proved to be futile, so at 3:20am on the morning of April 12th 1861, Beauregard informed Anderson that unless he surrendered the fort, the Confederates would open fire in one hour.
The first shot on the fort was fired at 4:30am and the bombardment began.
Anderson held fire from his guns until after 7:00am. Because of his small force he avoided manning the guns on the upper tier because these positions were exposed and casualties were likely. But these were also the guns that had the best chance of returning the most effective fire on the Confederate positions.
The bombardment lasted for 34 hours. Towards the end, a Confederate shell crashed into the officer's quarters starting a serious fire and threatening the fort's magazine (where the shells were stored).
The fort's central flagpole also was hit, and before it could be repaired, Confederate envoys arrived thinking that the fort's colors were "struck" - signalling surrender.
That was not the case, but Anderson did agree to a truce at 2:00pm on April 13th, 1861.
Terms for the withdrawal of the garrison were settled by that evening, and the Union garrison formally surrendered the fort to the Confederates at 2:30pm on April 14th.
No one from either side was killed during the bombardment.
But the first military engagement of the Civil War had been won by the Confederacy.
