Before dawn on April 12, 1861, a single shell arced over Charleston Harbor and burst above a lonely brick fort on an island. It was the signal every soldier had dreaded and half expected. Within the hour, batteries all around the harbor thundered to life against Fort Sumter and its small Union garrison. Almost no one would die in the bombardment that followed, yet those shots opened the American Civil War, the deadliest conflict in the nation's history, which over the next four years would claim hundreds of thousands of lives.
A Fort in a Divided Nation
By the spring of 1861 the United States was tearing apart. South Carolina had led a wave of Southern states in declaring secession, and a new Confederacy was forming even as the country waited to see whether Washington would fight. In Charleston Harbor, one of the busiest ports of the South, the unfinished masonry stronghold of Fort Sumter sat squarely in the middle of the water, a lingering symbol of federal authority in a city that no longer wished to be governed by it. Whoever held Sumter held the harbor, and the fort had become the tense focus of a standoff that the whole country was watching.
The Garrison and the Guns
Inside the fort was a small Union garrison of around eighty men commanded by Major Robert Anderson, a career officer and, ironically, a Southerner by birth who remained loyal to the Union. Short of food and cut off from resupply, Anderson and his men were surrounded by a ring of Confederate batteries built up along the shoreline and neighboring islands. In command of those guns was General P.G.T. Beauregard, who had once been Anderson's own artillery student at West Point. As provisions in the fort dwindled and Washington sent word that it would attempt to resupply the garrison, the Confederate authorities decided they would reduce the fort before relief could arrive.
The Bombardment
When Anderson refused a final demand to surrender, the Confederate guns opened fire at around half past four in the morning on April 12, 1861. For roughly thirty-four hours the batteries pounded the fort, hurling thousands of shot and shell across the water while crowds gathered on Charleston's rooftops to watch the spectacle. The outnumbered and outgunned garrison fired back as best it could, but with limited powder and no hope of reinforcement, the outcome was never in doubt. Fires broke out inside the fort, the barracks burned, and the flag was shot down at least once before being raised again. On April 13, his position untenable, Anderson agreed to terms and surrendered the fort.
A Bloodless Start to a Bloody War
The most striking fact about the battle of Fort Sumter is that, despite the ferocity of the shelling, no one was killed in combat during the bombardment itself. The only deaths came afterward, during the surrender ceremony, when an accidental explosion during a gun salute killed a Union soldier. Anderson and his men were allowed to march out with honor and sail north, where they were greeted as heroes. But the meaning of those two days was enormous. President Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion, more Southern states seceded in response, and a war that many had imagined would be short and glorious began in earnest. The nearly bloodless clash at Sumter had opened four years of carnage that would remake the United States.