The Strategic Key to Charleston: Fort Sumter, 1861-1865
In 1861, Fort Sumter was the flashpoint where debates over the expansion of slavery and the secession of some southern states exploded into an armed conflict that lasted four years and claimed well over 620,000 lives. Tensions in Charleston Harbor had been growing for many years. By the winter of 1861, that tension had focused in around a small Union garrison of about 80 people and would ultimately catapult the nation into war.
When South Carolina became the first state to secede from the United States on December 20, 1860, Major Robert Anderson, who commanded a force of about 80 men of Companies E and H of the 1st U.S. Artillery stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island (just over a mile from Fort Sumter), faced a difficult decision. Within a week, he opted to move the garrison to Fort Sumter, still a construction site, in the middle of Charleston Harbor, which offered a better strategic position. The move angered white South Carolinians who began building fortifications and raising regiments. By April of 1861, the supplies of the small Union contingent were almost exhausted, and when recently-inaugurated President Abraham Lincoln attempted to send a resupply expedition, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter from Fort Johnson on James Island about a mile and a quarter from Fort Sumter). After around 30-hours of bombardment from positions all over Charleston Harbor, the Confederate forces had been able to catch the interiors of both the enlisted men’s barracks and officers’ quarters on fire. With the fire threatening the powder supply, Anderson’s garrison surrendered on the generous terms that they would be allowed to lower their flag to a 100-gun salute and take it with them as they evacuated and that the Confederates would not take any prisoners.
Following this initial bombardment, Confederate forces were stationed inside Fort Sumter, which remained the strategic key to guarding Charleston, one of the South’s commercial hubs and a crucial point for blockade-running, for all four years of Civil War. The Confederates held the small island fortification despite Union troops on Morris Island (about three-quarters of a mile from Fort Sumter) firing over 40,000 heavy cannon rounds, launching a small-boat attack, and assembling the largest fleet of ironclads that had worked together in history to try and reduce the brick walls.
Fort Sumter, Exterior, April 14, 1861
Library of Congress
Fort Sumter, Exterior, 1865
Library of Congress
Fort Sumter's Union Officers, 1861, In front row (from left): Capt. A. Doubleday, Major R. Anderson, Asst. Secry. S. W. Crawford, Capt. J. S. Foster. In back row: Capt. T. Seymour, Lt. G. W. Snyder, Lt. J. C. Davis, Lt. R. K. Meade, Capt. T. Talbot.
Library of Congress
Union Connections
Among the Union garrison in 1861, was Captain Abner Doubleday, who was second in command. At Antietam, Doubleday, by then a Brigadier General, would lead a division in General Joseph Hooker’s First Corps, which fought in the Cornfield during the morning hours of the battle. Surgeon Samuel Wylie Crawford was also among the original defenders of Fort Sumter. Crawford (Brigadier General by 1862) commanded a brigade in the Twelfth Corps at Antietam and took over division command when Alpheus Williams was put into temporary corps command after General Joseph Mansfield’s mortal wounding. Both Crawford and Doubleday left engaging published accounts of their time within the walls of Fort Sumter. Captain Truman Seymour and Second Lieutenant Norman J. Hall both served as officers at Fort Sumter. Hall was as an emissary during the negotiations between Union and Confederate officers prior to the bombardment, and later was instrumental in re-raising the flag when it was shot down. At Antietam, Brigadier General Truman Seymour led a brigade in the First Corps, and assumed command of George Meade’s division when Meade took over corps command after Hooker's wounding. Colonel Norman J. Hall commanded the 7th Michigan, which was part of Napoleon Dana’s brigade fighting in the southern reaches of the West Woods.
George S. James
NPS
Confederate Connections
Many of the Confederate forces involved in the initial bombardment of Fort Sumter would also participate in the Maryland Campaign. In fact, the commander of the battery that fired the first shot of the entire Civil War from a mortar battery at Fort Johnson on James Island, Captain George S. James would later be killed by a minie ball through the chest during the Battle of South Mountain. James commanded the 3rd South Carolina Battalion, which was under Brigadier General Thomas Drayton whose troops were sent to reinforce D.H. Hill.
Even before hostilities officially broke out, two other Confederate officers later involved with the Battle of Antietam played critical roles. Captain Stephen D. Lee, who was an aide-de-camp of General P.G.T. Beauregard, was responsible for many of the trips back and forth to Fort Sumer to try and negotiate terms of evacuation or surrender for the Union troops within leading up to the first shots. At Antietam, Stephen Lee commanded a battalion of artillery posted on the high ground often referred to at the time as the Dunker Church plateau where the Visitor Center is now located. Roger Pryor, who would go on to lead a brigade in Richard H. Anderson’s division at the Sunken Road at Antietam, had gone to Charleston as a civilian. A fire-eater (passionate supporter of secession) and politician, he wanted to witness the outbreak of the war. Allegedly, forces on James Island offered him the honor of firing the first shot of the war, but he declined. Pryor also almost became the first person to die during the Civil War. He accompanied some of Beauregard’s emissaries to negotiate the terms of evacuation with Union Major Robert Anderson at the conclusion of the battle. He reached for a nearby bottle, assuming it was whiskey, only to find out that he had been mistaken and that the bottle contained potassium iodide, which is toxic. Crawford, the Fort’s Surgeon, had to take him outside and administer a stomach pump which saved his life.
Roger Pryor
Library of Congress
Maxcy Gregg, who led a brigade of A.P. Hill’s command, which arrived on the field during the final hours of the battle to assist with D.R. Jones’s defense of Sharpsburg, commanded the 1st South Carolina Volunteers at Fort Sumter. In addition, Joseph Kershaw, who commanded a brigade under Lafayette McLaws in the West Woods at Antietam was in command of the 2nd SC Infantry, which was stationed on Morris Island during the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861.
Other Confederate officers present at Antietam were a part of Fort Sumter’s history after the first bombardment of the war. Richard Herron Anderson, who commanded a division that reinforced the Confederate line holding the Sunken Road at Antietam, was commander of Fort Sumter during its early Confederate occupation and held that post from April to July 1861. Roswell Ripley was stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island during the first battle of the Civil War. Later, he was in command of the defenses of Charleston in 1861 and was exiled back to Charleston Harbor following personality conflicts with superior commanders in 1863. At Antietam, Ripley commanded a brigade of D.H. Hill’s division, which was sent northward to assist in the Cornfield and East Woods in the morning hours. Ripley was wounded in the neck, so his appearance on the battlefield was limited during the engagement.
Roswell Ripley
Library of Congress
Forged by War
By the fall of 1862, the Civil War had unfolded differently than many had predicted as war fever was heating up in Charleston in the winter of 1860 and the spring of 1861. Many of those who had served along the Carolina coast during those early, optimistic days, had been forged in the crucible of war and promoted through the ranks to become division and brigade commanders. After Antietam, those early visions of the Civil War would transform even further. On September 22, President Abraham Lincoln would issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, changing the war for Union to a war for abolition. It has also become clear to most Americans that the short, relatively bloodless war that many had originally predicted was not to be. War would transform the lives of Fort Sumter’s defenders and attackers in ways that they could not even have imagined in 1861, just as the war would forever change the face of a small town in Western Maryland and the nation.
