by Zachary Belins

Created on: May 01, 2009

Prior to the Battle of Fort Sumter, South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed by six more states, in response to the election of President Abraham Lincoln. A noted abolitionist, he was elected on the pretense of restricting the Westward expansion of slavery. In noted alarm, the Southern states perceived this as a threat and left the Union to preserve their way of life. The Confederate States of America seized all federal forts in their territory except for four - one of them being the strategically placed Fort Sumter, located on the Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.

Expecting aggression after South Carolina seceded, the troops stationed at Fort Moultrie secretly relocated to the more defensible, and newer, Fort Sumter under the cover of the night. Guns were brought in from a nearby arsenal, leading the South Carolina government to threaten violence. When President Buchanan, still in office until Lincoln's inauguration, sent a relief ship to re-supply the fort, it was fired upon by Confederate batteries and forced to turn around. A similar attempt under President Lincoln, this time with naval escort, led to the attack on Fort Sumter.

After a tense, elongated standoff and thirty-four hours of bombardment, the garrison at Fort Sumter - eighty men strong and led by Major Robert Anderson - surrendered to the Confederate troops. Nobody was killed during the engagement, though afterwards a mistake with exploding powder led to two Northern deaths and two injuries. This would become widely known as the beginning battle of the American Civil War, and Fort Sumter was under Confederate control until a few days after Robert E. Lee surrendered.

The garrison stationed there surrendered, but part of the terms of laying down arms was that the troops be allowed to give a salute to the US flag with rifles (this is what caused the aforementioned fatal accident). The defense fort was allowed to return to Northern territory, and was moved aboard a Confederate steamship, which offloaded them on to a Northern ship. The flag of Sumter, taken with Major Anderson, became a symbol of the war.

Believing the uprising to be small so far, President Lincoln asked for a volunteer army of seventy-five thousand to quell it. Several state militias also began moving against the Confederation the day after the Battle of Fort Sumter. Thus began four years of conflict, the deadliest war in American history that claimed nearly six-hundred thousand lives.

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