The Curtain Goes Up - Fort Sumter

[Jim Klag]

April 12, 1861 - The Bombardment, Evacuation, and Surrender of Fort Sumter, SC, by Maj. Robert Anderson, after meeting with Confederate Commissioners, Col. James Chestnut, Lt. Col. A. R Chisolm, and Capt. Stephen D. Lee, refusing to surrender. (Apr 12-14)

Fort Sumter

Early in the morning of April 12, 1861, Confederate guns around Charleston Harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter. The American Civil War was officially upon both the North and the South. A war that lasted four years and cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans.

www.battlefields.org

 

[Jim Klag]

Fort Sumter: Civil War, Battle & Location | HISTORY

Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and is most famous for being the site of the first battle of the Civil War.

www.history.com

 

[Jim Klag]

Battle of Fort Sumter, April 1861 (U.S. National Park Service)

www.nps.gov

 

[5fish]

Here Ft Johnson fired the first shoot...

Fort Johnson History – Marine Resources Library

Fort Johnson is probably best remembered today as the place from which one signaling mortar shell was fired – a shell that opened the bombardment of Fort Sumter. The ultimate appeal had been made in the hitherto political conflict between North and South, for that one mortar shell symbolized the appeal to force.

In 1864 the fort saw its last military encounter when a group of confederates beat back and captured a sizeable force of Union troops. In the following year the fort was evacuated. Slowly it fell into rack and ruin.

 

[5fish]

Here is the artillery unit that fired the first shot...

Battlefields in Motion - Civil War Artillery - 10-inch Mortars

snip...

Eventually, a total of 33 of these 10-inch seacoast mortars would be acquired during the antebellum era by the U.S. Artillery, for distribution among various arsenals, until hostilities between North and South erupted — and in fact, this conflict’s very opening shot would be fired by Confederate Capt. George S. James’s 10-inch seacoast mortar from beside Fort Johnson on James Island, South Carolina, soaring across Charleston Harbor through the dark rainy dawn to detonate above Fort Sumter shortly before 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. As full-scale mobilization thereupon ensued, a few dozen more 10-inch seacoast mortars would be hastily ordered by both sides, plus an additional eight in a heftier M.1861 version for the Union forces — although this latter design was quickly discontinued in favor of purchases of more powerful and longer-ranged 13-inch weapons