At the time of the firing on Fort Sumter, the Union only held two major forts in the new Confederate States of America (which at this time only consisted of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas): Fort Sumter, South Carolina and Fort Pickens, Florida. The Lincoln Administration chose to draw a line in the sand when it came to these two otherwise unknown installations. On April 6, Lincoln informed South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens that he would seek to resupply the Union garrison at Fort Sumter, by force if necessary. The Confederate cabinet met and decided that the fort must be “reduced.” At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, a single mortar was fired over the fort, the signal for the 50 Confederate guns ringing Charleston Harbor to open fire. The bombardment lasted more than 34 hours, with no casualties on either side. As a condition of his surrender, Union Major Robert Anderson insisted upon a 100 gun salute for the U.S. flag. During the salute, a cannon exploded killing one soldier instantly and mortally wounding another. These would be the first of over 600,000 men killed in America’s bloodiest war.
The politics of Fort Sumter are admittedly more interesting than the actual event. Lincoln had shown his political skill by maneuvering the Confederate forces into firing the first shot of the war, making them appear to be the aggressors. While the Confederate forces were doing nothing that the United States or any other country would not have done with a hostile fort in one of their busiest harbors, in the eyes of the Northern press, public, and modern historians it appears as if the South started the war. Fort Sumter became a rallying cry for the Northern public and spurred a massive number of enlistments in the Union army. Lincoln’s clever trick did not, however, convince all of the Border States to remain with the Union. Upon Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to quell the Southern “insurrection,” the states of Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee promptly seceded and joined their sister Southern states in the fledgling Confederate States of America, refusing to allow their soldiers to be used in what they saw as a war of subjugation. The Confederate flag would fly over Fort Sumter until the last year of the war.
The firing on Fort Sumter is remembered as the event that started the War Between the States, and in many ways that is true. Up to that point, the disagreements between South and North had been more academic than real and tangible. We didn’t start shooting at each other until after Fort Sumter. While in hindsight it may seem like a ridiculous decision for the Confederate government to make, we must put ourselves in others’ shoes to truly understand. President Jefferson Davis was the leader of a nation that was not recognized by any other nation on Earth. There was yet no Confederate nationalist feeling within the states that formed the Confederacy. Just as the North needed Fort Sumter to spur army recruitment, so too did the South need Fort Sumter to prove to the world and, more importantly, to itself and its people that it could stand up to the United States. The Confederate people could look to this event before any other and celebrate a victory, their victory. Before there was Robert E. Lee and his vaunted Army of Northern Virginia, there was P.G.T. Beauregard and Fort Sumter. April 12, 1861 will forever stand as a watershed moment for South and North, Confederate and Union, Reb and Yank.
Deo Vindice