Fort Sumter National Monument, Charleston, South Carolina

From afar, Ft. Sumter looks like the stump of a tree cut off at its base. It was. From 1861 to 1865, tens of thousands artillery shells fell on or near it. I admit I was a bit disappointed. I had trouble imaging the drama and recreating the fort prior to April 1861. What helped was Paul, a guide on the ferry, who said that Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was a sister fort. Below is Fort Point last summer. Once I recalled that, I realized that I was looking at a stump of a fort, its fifty-five foot high walls demolished by Confederate and then Union bombardments.

Fort Sumter from the ferry (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Point, a sister to Fort Sumter (Photo by Hunner)

Charleston has perhaps the best harbor for a port along the Atlantic South coast. Founded in 1670, it helped shape the South and the country. Patriot soldiers fought off nine British warships who tried to capture the port in 1776. Native son Charles Pinckney helped draft the Constitution in 1787. As the port closer to Africa than most other colonies, it was the biggest slave market in the country.  A center for business and culture of the South, by 1790 Charleston was the 4^th biggest city in the new nation.

In downtown Charleston, the Old Slave Market tells the history of slavery, from Africans captured and crammed onto ships and suffering through the Middle Passage to slave markets to forced labor in harsh conditions. Many of the European colonies in North, South, and Central America imported more than 9,000,000 slaves to the New World.[1]

Northern states began to abolish slavery in the 1780s, and the U.S. Constitution banned the importation of slaves by 1808. But the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 invigorated the South. With this machine, fifty times as much cotton could be cleaned than by hand. Since plantation owners needed more labor to grow and process cotton, a slave society grew.

Cotton harvesting (From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

From 1789 to 1865, one million American born men, women, and children of African descent were bought and sold. The Old Slave Market notes that “splitting families was a business decision.”[2] By 1860, 4,000,000 slaves worked in the South. For more about slavery and the causes of the civil war, please go to these postings at Driven by History: African Burial Grounds and the causes of the Civil War.

In 1856, Charleston outlawed the outdoor auction of slaves, so the markets went indoors. In the four block area around the Old Slave Market, forty indoor marts sprang up. The building that houses the museum was one—Ryan’s Mart. The last auction at Ryan’s occurred on November 1863. In this building, a healthy man sold for around $36,000 in 2007 dollars, a woman, $ 32,000, and a girl between $21,000 to $26,000. In 1860, Charleston had a population of 44,000 including 14,000 slaves, and 3,000 free blacks.[3]

To protect Charleston's harbor, the U.S. built Fort Sumter in 1829 by dumping New England granite onto a sand shoal at the mouth of the harbor to create an island. To construct the fort, slaves made bricks and used them to make the massive walls. No one entered Charleston without sailing past the guns on the island.

Fort Sumter before the war (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Charleston was no stranger to protesting the federal government. During the Nullification Crisis in 1828 and again in 1832, South Carolina called for secession. It refused to pay taxes on imported manufactured goods. Such tariffs protected the northern states’ growing industries like textile factories, but penalized the southern states who produced the cotton. It also harmed the South’s trade relations with England. Vice President John Calhoun resigned, and federal troops arrived in Charleston to collect the back duties. Even though a compromise tariff calmed the waters in 1833, taxation continued to raise hackles in the new Republic.

Technology changed in the first half of the 19th century, not only in weaponry but perhaps just as important for armies this big, in transportation. Initially canals, then railroads and river traffic knitted the Republic together. Steamboats toted heavy loads of cargo and people up shallow rivers, and railroads did the same through the heart of the continent. These steam powered conveyances connected farms to markets, towns to cities, and during the war, battlefields to battlefields and soldier to soldier.

As the movement to abolish slavery in the North grew, a new national party emerged. The presidential election of 1860 saw a four-person race, including the first time the Republican Party offered a candidate- Abraham Lincoln. The Republican platform did not call for the abolition of all slavery, but did want to close off the western territories to it. Lincoln won as the vote splintered among the four men, and the South rose up to challenge the power of the federal government to limit their rights to own slaves.

The presidential and vice presidential candidates for the Republican Party in 1860
(From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi)

The Secession winter tore the country in two. Southerners argued about whether to stay in the Union or not. Addressing the South Carolina’s Democratic convention in 1860, J.S. Preston said: “Slavery is our King. Slavery is our Truth. Slavery is our Divine Right.”[4] That state seceded first on December 12, 1861, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana in January, Texas in February (when the government of the Confederate States of America formed), Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina in April, and Tennessee in June.   

The North and the South organized their armed forces on massive scales, but to win with such large armies took time to figure out. New armies don’t win overnight. Organizing the training, the movement of troops, the supplying of food, ammunition, clothing, and medical support takes coordination. An army at dawn learns by the mistakes it makes.[5] Those mistakes cost men their lives, both in the early battles as well as in the missed opportunities that could have ended the war sooner, for either side. Few anticipated the wrath and sorrow that was descending on the people of the crumbling Republic.

And so, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, a civil war erupted. Confederate shells fell on the Union fort at the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After South Carolina seceded, eighty-five Union soldiers under Major Robert Anderson bolted from Fort Moultrie and rowed over to Fort Sumter. There they holed up in a fort meant to be defended by 650 and waited for reinforcements.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861 (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Having been warned by Lincoln that a Union supply ship was due, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Fort Sumter fired on. On April 13, General P.G.T. Beauregard (one of Anderson’s students at West Point) opened up with his batteries from Fort Moultrie against Fort Sumter. The bombardment lasted for thirty-four hours, and then Anderson, low on men and supplies, surrendered.

Once the Confederacy had Fort Sumter, much of the blockade running that supplied the South with goods from Europe sought the safe harbor of Charleston. Davis stated: “Fort Sumter, where was first given to the breeze the flag of the Confederacy.” Lincoln had his own thoughts: “The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault on Fort Sumter.”[6]

The first state to secede, the first shots of the Civil War, and now a haven for Southern supplies, Charleston and South Carolina attracted the North’s ire. The Union focused on Fort Sumter as a key target. For twenty-two months, Union cannons from first sea and then land targeted the fort. A Confederate log book from the fort recorded the action: “Aug. 18, 1863- enemy opened fire 5 am to 7 pm. 876 shots and shells fired. 452 struck outside, 24, inside, 180 passed over.” In total, Union cannons shot more than 44,000 shells during its almost two year long bombardment. At the fort, 309 Southern soldiers died.

Confederate held Fort Sumter under attack (From exhibit at Fort Sumter)

Fort Sumter sparked the Civil War and was reduced to almost rubble. Standing on the rail of the ferry after the 1 ½ hour visit and watching it recede, I imagined an overlay of a multi-storied brick fortress rising out of the straits at the mouth of Charleston Harbor but saw a short stump, a symbol of the amputated country, of the veterans without limbs, and how the legacy of Civil War continues to impact the country.

The fort as the ferry sails back to Charleston (Photo by Hunner)

Fort Sumter joined the NPS as a National Monument in 1948 under President Truman. Fort Moultrie was acquired on May 1, 1963 and added to Fort Sumter.

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[1] From exhibit at Old Slave Market, SC. Web?

[2] From exhibit at the Old Slave Market, Charleston, SC. Web?

[3] From exhibit at the Old Slave Market, Charleston, SC,

[4] From the Fort Sumter exhibit at Liberty Square, Charleston, S.C.

[5] I borrowed this term from Rick Atkinson’s title of the same. He wrote about the Allied forces at the beginning of World War II in north Africa.

[6] Both quotes come from the exhibit at Fort Sumter.