The Fighting Over Fort Sumter (cont.)

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The Fighting Over Fort Sumter (cont.)
A state secedes as tensions mount.
Wander around the surrounding brick and cobblestone streets of Porgy and Bess fame and imagine the traffic of the 1850s—carriages and wagons, fish mongers yelling their wares, free black craftsmen, servants hurrying on household errands, yeoman farmers plodding along with wagons of produce, gentlemen planters on holiday, serious-faced merchants hurrying to their shops, and soldiers in blue uniforms on leave from the harbor forts. Examine Charleston's "skyscrapers"—the steeples of St. Michael's and St. Philip's—and mosey through their ancient, colorful graveyards with brick and mortar monuments to the long-forgotten and the city aristocracy. Pause before the Revolutionary-era Custom House. Ponder the long-gone bustle of the old Charleston Market. Catch the cadence of cadets at The Citadel, the state's own military college.

Wandering milk cows casually scaled the old fort's walls.

This is Charleston. Charming. Colorful. Irresistible. And always lingering in the shadow of history, hovering over the modern atmosphere of this fascinating city is The War. Perhaps that uniquely U.S. conflict really began in the corridors of Congress as two vastly different Americas competed for power, influence, and survival. Perhaps it really began in wide-open Kansas as Northerners and Southerners became inflamed with the catalyst that ignited long-suppressed misunderstandings and rivalries. Perhaps it really began in tiny, mountainous Harpers Ferry with a fierce, gun wielding, white-bearded zealot intent on confrontation.

No matter. In the hearts and minds of Americans North and South, the Civil War began in Charleston. At Fort Sumter.

It's a squat, dark shape rising from the waters of Charleston Harbor. And, just as it did in 1861, Fort Sumter still looms over the port city's ship channel. Seen from Charleston's towering Cooper River Bridge or from the city's harbor-side Battery area, Fort Sumter hardly looks imposing.

Yet in April of 1861, the attention of all America was focused on this pentagon-shaped brick and mortar fortress rising atop a shoal in Charleston Harbor. As springtime warmth began to cloak South Carolina, a life-changing, nation-changing crisis was coming to a dramatic and violent climax. Four months earlier, on December 20, 1860, a secession convention called by the state legislature had declared the bonds between the United States government and South Carolina to be officially dissolved. Within weeks, six more states had seceded from the Federal Union, had united to form the Confederate States of America, and had vowed to fight if necessary to defend Southern independence. Tensions between North and South smoldered to a kindling point—and caught fire in Charleston. The crisis shifted to Charleston and intensified less than a week after South Carolina's secession when Major Robert Anderson, the senior U.S. Army officer in Charleston, made a controversial decision. Anderson commanded the Federal army posts ringing Charleston Harbor, but his command was paper-thin. Headquartered at Fort Moultrie, an aging brick fort dating back to the Revolutionary War, Anderson's force consisted of a mere 73 troops—including an eight-piece garrison band.

The 55-year-old Anderson was a Southerner, Kentucky-born, and his father had defended a palmetto log battery on the site of Fort Moultrie against the British during the Revolutionary War. Some believed U.S. Secretary of War John B. Floyd—also a Southerner—had posted Anderson to Charleston because he believed Anderson would not contest an attempt by the state to occupy the port's Federal fortifications. If that was Floyd's expectation, Anderson surely disappointed him; the major was committed to obeying orders and defending his command—even if it meant doing battle with fellow Southerners.

Anderson had held his command barely a month when South Carolina seceded, and, fearing state authorities would soon demand surrender of his post, the major calculated his chances of defending Fort Moultrie. Wandering milk cows casually scaled the old fort's walls. Civilian homes loomed above the fortification's ramparts. Moultrie's sea battery looked ominous, but the fort was not designed or fortified to be defended against a land-side assault. His skeleton garrison had too few troops to even man all his guns. The odds of repelling an attack on Fort Moultrie, Anderson concluded, were extremely poor.

More than a mile across Charleston Harbor, however, sat a much more defensible fortification—Fort Sumter. Named for General Thomas Sumter, one of South Carolina's Revolutionary War heroes, the three-story fort, although still under construction, was well armed with heavy seacoast artillery, sturdily built, and surrounded by water. Compared to aging Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter was an impregnable castle. At dusk on the day after Christmas 1860, Major Anderson issued his troops a surprise order: in 20 minutes they would evacuate their post at Moultrie and relocate to Fort Sumter. There they surprised a civilian construction crew of South Carolinians under contract to the Federal government, rounded them up at bayonet point, and took up stations in the island fortress. Later that night, Anderson removed his rear guard from Fort Moultrie after the troops spiked Moultrie's guns, burned gun carriages and chopped down the post flagstaff. Anderson's actions were unmistakable: he had moved his Federal force to a defensible position and he would defend it.

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