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.
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| Fort Sumter from the ferry (Photo by Hunner) |
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| Fort Point, a sister to Fort Sumter (Photo by Hunner) |
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.
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| Cotton harvesting (From exhibit at the Civil War Interpretive Center, Corinth, Mississippi) |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Confederate held Fort Sumter under attack (From exhibit at Fort Sumter) |
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| 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.
[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.
