Field Atlas
Battle № 02

Charleston Harbor
South Carolina

The American Civil War · Opening Engagement

FORT
SUMTER

For thirty-four hours, one United States garrison answered a ring of Confederate guns. No one died in the bombardment. When the flag came down, the country was at war.

12—13 APR 1861
A hand-colored Currier and Ives lithograph showing Confederate batteries bombarding Fort Sumter across Charleston Harbor
Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Currier & Ives, 1861 Library of Congress
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December 1860 — April 1861

South Carolina seceded.
Anderson held Fort Sumter.

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, after Abraham Lincoln’s election. Its declaration centered the crisis on slavery—especially opposition to slavery’s expansion and the refusal of Northern states to enforce slaveholders’ claims. Within six weeks, five more Deep South states had left the Union and joined a new Confederacy. 1

The federal holdout

Major Robert Anderson moved about 85 United States soldiers from vulnerable Fort Moultrie to unfinished Fort Sumter on December 26. South Carolina forces occupied the harbor positions around him. 2

Fort Moultrie Fort Sumter Fort Johnson

Crossfire across the harbor

Before the first shot

Lincoln decided to resupply the fort.

Fort Sumter was strong enough to resist an assault but not an island siege. The garrison needed food. In January, South Carolina batteries drove away the merchant ship Star of the West, which carried soldiers and supplies. By early April, Anderson warned Washington that his provisions were almost exhausted. 2

President Lincoln chose to send food rather than quietly abandon the fort. His administration notified South Carolina that the expedition would carry provisions only unless the ships or fort were attacked. The decision tried to hold federal property without making the United States fire first. 3

Confederate leaders faced the opposite calculation. Allowing the supplies to land would leave a United States flag flying inside the Confederacy’s most celebrated harbor. On April 11, Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard demanded evacuation. Anderson refused, though he admitted hunger would soon force him out. A final offer failed after midnight. At 3:20 a.m., Confederate envoys told Anderson the batteries would open in one hour. 3

Friday, April 12

The bombardment began
at 4:30 A.M.

4:30 A.M.

01 / The bombardment

The first day

FRI
APR 12

Fort Johnson

Fort Johnson fired the signal shell

On Captain George S. James’s order, a ten-inch mortar fired from James Island. Its shell arced over Fort Sumter and burst above it. Within half an hour, every Confederate battery in range had joined the bombardment. 3

Charleston residents climbed rooftops and watched the harbor flash before dawn.

Inside Fort Sumter

Anderson’s guns returned fire

Anderson kept his men under cover until daylight. Captain Abner Doubleday then aimed a 32-pounder at the ironclad battery on Cummings Point. The shot struck accurately and bounced away.

More than forty guns were usable, but too few soldiers were present to serve them. Anderson also kept crews off the exposed upper tier. Only the smaller casemate guns could reply, and their fire did little damage. 3

Charleston Harbor

The harbor batteries concentrated their fire

Cannon at Fort Moultrie, Cummings Point, Fort Johnson, and other harbor works converged on the brick pentagon. Roughly 6,000 Confederate troops guarded the surrounding positions. Anderson had no land route out and the relief ships offshore could not safely enter.

Inside, the garrison rationed ammunition and sewed new cartridges from blankets and spare uniform cloth. By noon only six Union guns remained in action. 2

Thirty-three-star flag still flying

Mortar fire continued after dark

Sumter’s crews stopped firing after dark. The Confederate cannonade slackened, but mortar shells continued to climb and fall through the night. Engineers found the exterior walls standing; inside, the damage already looked more severe. 3

Who fired first?

The signal shot came from Fort Johnson.

Later accounts often gave the war’s first shot to Edmund Ruffin, a Virginia secessionist who had traveled to Charleston. Ruffin did fire an early cannon from the ironclad battery at Cummings Point—but only after the signal mortar had opened the battle from Fort Johnson. 2

The distinction mattered because the opening became symbolic almost immediately. Confederate memory celebrated the moment as the defense of a new nation. United States memory treated it as an attack on the flag and federal authority. A sequence of military orders, signal fire, and dozens of batteries narrowed into a search for one man and one lanyard.

The larger cause was never contained in a single cannon. The confrontation grew from secession, and South Carolina’s own declaration tied secession to the protection of slavery. Fort Sumter supplied the spark; the political crisis had been built over decades. 1

Between the days

The bombardment continued overnight.

Occasional mortar rounds traced slow arcs above the black water. Inside Sumter, officers inspected walls, counted cartridges, and prepared to resume fire. Offshore, the relief expedition remained unable to reach the fort. Anderson’s men would face the second day with less ammunition and no escape from the tightening bombardment. 3

Ammunition at the start 700 cartridges for the fort

02 / Fire & surrender

The second day

SAT
APR 13

Late morning

The officers’ quarters caught fire.

Hot shot from Fort Moultrie ignited the officers’ quarters. Wind drove flames through the barracks and toward the powder magazine. Men rolled out barrels of powder, then sealed the magazine under earth as heat and smoke filled the casemates.

By late morning, defenders lay on the floor with wet cloths over their faces. Around 1:00 p.m. the flagstaff fell under fire, but soldiers raised the flag again on a temporary pole. 3

60

Guns ready before battle

6

Still firing by noon, day one

Sunday, April 14

Anderson evacuated the fort

Former United States senator Louis T. Wigfall crossed to the fort without Beauregard’s authority and helped begin confused negotiations. Authorized envoys followed. Anderson accepted evacuation terms after thirty-four hours of defense.

The garrison marched out the next afternoon with its flag and private property. A planned hundred-gun salute ended at fifty after a premature explosion killed Private Daniel Hough and injured five men; Private Edward Gallway later died. 3

The ledger

The bombardment killed no one.
Two men died in the flag salute.

Five United States soldiers were injured during the bombardment. The battle’s first deaths came afterward, in the accidental explosion during the evacuation salute. 3

Group or event Killed Wounded Missing Total
U.S. bombardment 0 5 0 5
Confederate bombardment 0 0 0 0
U.S. flag salute 2 4 0 6

“Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours … I accepted terms of evacuation.”

Major Robert Anderson’s report, April 18, 1861 3

The war begins

Fort Sumter brought the country to war.

News of the surrender traveled faster than the garrison. On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. The call pushed the crisis into the Upper South. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina soon joined the Confederacy. Men on both sides entered new armies whose scale and endurance few had imagined. 4

The Confederacy held Fort Sumter for nearly four years. After United States forces captured Morris Island in 1863, artillery pounded the fort into rubble but could not force its evacuation. Confederate soldiers and enslaved laborers rebuilt shattered masonry as earthworks and bombproofs. 5

Charleston finally fell as William T. Sherman’s army advanced through South Carolina in February 1865. On April 14—four years to the day after Anderson’s evacuation—the same United States flag rose again above Fort Sumter. That evening, Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre; he died the next morning. 5

01

Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers

Lincoln’s call transformed a standoff over federal property into national mobilization. Volunteers rushed into service across the North.

02

Four more states seceded

The Upper South had hesitated. The firing and the call for troops drove Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina into the Confederacy.

03

Anderson’s flag returned in 1865

Anderson carried the storm flag north. Its return to Sumter in 1865 framed the war between two ceremonies on the same date.

Sources & notes

Sources for this account.

The narrative draws on National Park Service interpretation and Library of Congress visual records. Numbered references in the text point to the notes below.

  1. National Park Service, “Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center Exhibit.”

    Slavery, sectional crisis, South Carolina’s secession, and the political stakes behind the confrontation.

  2. National Park Service, “Fort Sumter and the Coming of the Civil War.”

    Anderson’s move, the Star of the West, harbor defenses, opening fire, gun strength, surrender, and later history.

  3. National Park Service, “Battle of Fort Sumter, April 1861.”

    Negotiations, the detailed sequence of the bombardment, fire inside the fort, Wigfall’s role, evacuation, and casualties during the flag salute.

  4. National Park Service, “Road to Secession, Part 2.”

    Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers and the secession of four additional slave states after the bombardment.

  5. National Park Service, “Fort Sumter.”

    The fort’s Confederate occupation, the 1863–65 siege, enslaved labor, evacuation, and restoration of the United States flag.

  6. Currier & Ives, “Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor,” 1861.

    Hero artwork from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; no known restrictions on publication.