Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter, located in Charleston, South Carolina, was named after General Thomas Sumter. However, the fort is best known as the site where the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter was built after the War of 1812 as one of a series of fortifications on the southern U.S. coast. Construction began in 1829, using slave labor, and the structure was unfinished in 1860, when the conflict began. Seventy thousand tons of granite were imported from New England to build up a sand bar in the entrance to Charleston harbor, which the site dominates. The fort was a five-sided structure (although not a regular pentagon but more like the home plate used in baseball). It was a brick structure, 170 to 190 feet long, with walls five feet thick, standing 50 feet over the low tide mark. It was designed to house 650 men and 135 guns in three tiers of gun emplacements, although it was never filled near capacity.

On December 26, 1860, five days after South Carolina declared its secession, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson abandoned the indefensible Fort Moultrie and secretly relocated his two companies (127 men, 13 of them musicians) of the 1st U.S. Artillery to Fort Sumter. He thought that providing a stronger defense would delay a Rebel attack. The Fort was not yet complete at the time and fewer than half of the cannons that should have been there were available due to military downsizing by James Buchanan. Over the next few months, repeated calls for Union surrender from Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard were ignored, and Union attempts to resupply and reinforce the garrison were rebuffed.

1863–1865
With Fort Sumter in Confederate hands, the port of Charleston was a hole in the Federal naval blockade of the Atlantic coast. For the U.S. Navy to close the port, Fort Sumter would need to be retaken, and Rear Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont was ordered to take it.

On the afternoon of April 7, 1863, nine ironclads exchanged fire with Confederate batteries in the fort and around the harbor. The fort was barely damaged, but five of the ships were disabled. One, the USS Keokuk, sank the next morning. After this failure, federal strategy changed. Du Pont was replaced by Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren, who planned to combine land and sea operations to seize nearby Morris Island and from there to demolish the fort. Union troops under Brig. Gen. Quincy Adams Gillmore place rifled cannon on Morris Island. The fort's garrison consisted of five companies of the 1st South Carolina Artillery under Col. Alfred Rhett. They and slave laborers worked night and day to fortify the walls of Fort Sumter with dirt mounds and hay bales.

Massive Federal bombardment began on August 17, with almost 1,000 shells being fired the first day alone. Within a week, the fort's brick walls were in ruins, but the garrison refused to surrender and continued to repair and strengthen the defenses. Confederate guns at Fort Moultrie and other strongholds in the harbor returned fire .

Another U.S. Navy assault on September 9 failed again, some 400 sailors and Marines attacked the fort in row boats, after a hard fought battle the attackers were repulsed losing five ships and 124 men trying to take the fort. The bombardment continued intermittently until the end of December.

In the summer of 1864, Maj. Gen. John G. Foster replaced Gillmore as commander of land operations and attempted again to take the fort. Foster, a member of Anderson's 1861 garrison, believed that "with proper arrangements" the fort could be taken "at any time." Two months of bombardment, however, failed to dislodge the Confederate garrison and Foster abandoned the effort. Intermittent fire was maintained until Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's troops advancing north from Savannah, Georgia, forced the evacuation of Fort Sumter on February 17, 1865.

It is estimated that seven million pounds of artillery were shot at Fort Sumter during the war, yet the Confederate losses were only 52 killed and 267 wounded.