150 years ago today

The single event in American history that most affected the country's character was the Civil War. It was today that the war began when Confederate artillery began firing on Fort Sumter in the harbor approaches of Charleston, S.C.

Thousands of cannon rounds were fired to and from the fort, although the Union guns fell silent before the Confederate guns did. Finally, Fort Sumter's commander, Maj. Robert Anderson, ordered the white flag of surrender be raised. On April 14, the US flag was lowered and the fort was taken under Confederate control. The Confederate commander, Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, did not take the Union troops into captivity. Maj. Anderson and his troops were simply evacuated from the blasted fort and returned to the North. It must have been a bitter pill for Anderson to swallow to have been defeated by one of his former military students, Beauregard.

This was the least bloody battle of the rest of war, bloodless in fact, since neither side suffered a fatality during the battle. However, two Union soldiers were killed by accident during the surrender ceremony. Anderson's one condition for evacuating the fort was that his men be allowed to fire a 100-round salute to the Union. This Beauregard permitted. Union Pvt. Daniel Hough died instantly in an accidental explosion that also mortally wounded Pvt. Edward Gallway, who died in a Charleston hospital. Hough and Gallway were the first men to die in the Civil War.

The CSA occupied the fort until February 1865, then abandoned it because US Gen. William T. Sherman had seized Charleston and other US forces had taken supporting fortifications around Sumter, making its further occupation untenable. For most of the war, the US Navy had conducted extensive gunnery practice upon Fort Sumter, rendering it into rubble far more than the Confederates' bombardment had done.

The United States flag was raised again over Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865, exactly four years after it had been lowered. The officer raising the flag was Robert Anderson, then a medically-retired major general.

Fort Sumter today as seen from The Battery in Charleston.

A gun encasement inside the fort. The Union gunners tried to give as good as they got, but they were literally outgunned.  Click images for larger view. Photos by myself.

A pretty good video by the National Park Service, which owns the Sumter property today, is here.