The Charleston Harbor Tour’s vessel, The Carolina Belle, has a great new summertime event going on throughout the Summer! If you are up for a fantastic evening of live blues from Shrimp City Slim and BBQ provide by Fiery Ron’s Home Team BBQ!

Fort Sumter, a Third System masonry coastal fortification located in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, was named after General Thomas Sumter. The fort is best known as the site where the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.

Construction

Fort Sumter was built after the War of 1812 as one of a series of fortifications on the southern U.S. coast. Construction began in 1827, and the structure was still unfinished in 1860, when the conflict began. Seventy thousand tons of granite were imported from New England to build up a sand bar in the entrance to Charleston harbor, which the site dominates; The fort was a five-sided brick structure, 170 to 190 feet long, with walls five feet thick, standing 50 feet over the low tide mark. It was designed to house 650 men and 135 guns in three tiers of gun emplacements, although it was never filled near its full capacities.

On December 26, 1860, five days after South Carolina declared its secession, U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson abandoned the indefensible Fort Moultrie and secretly relocated his two companies (127 men, 13 of them musicians) of the 1st U.S. Artillery to Fort Sumter without official authorization or obedience to orders from Washington. He thought that providing a stronger defense would delay a Rebel attack. The Fort was not yet complete at the time and fewer than half of the cannons that should have been there were unavailable due to military downsizing by James Buchanan.

Over the next few months, repeated calls for the United States evacuation of Fort Sumter from the government of South Carolina and later Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard were ignored. United States attempts to resupply and reinforce the garrison were repulsed on January 9, 1861 when the first shots of the war prevented the steamer Star of the West, a ship hired by the United States to transport troops and supplies to Fort Sumter, from completing the task.

After realizing that Anderson’s command would run out of food by April 15, 1861, President Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships, under the command of Gustavus V. Fox, to attempt a forced entry into Charleston Harbor to reinforce Fort Sumter. The ships assigned were the steam sloop-of-war USS Pawnee, steam sloop-of-war USS Powhatan, transporting motorized launches and about 300 sailors (secretly removed from the Charleston fleet to join in the forced reenforcement of Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Fla.), armed screw steamer USS Pochaontas, Revenue Cutter USS Harriet Lane, steamer Baltic transporting about 200 troops, composed of companies C and D of the 2nd U.S. Artillery, and three hired tug boats.[

By April 6, 1861 the first ships began to set sail for their rendezvous off the Charleston Bar. The first to arrive, the Harriet Lane, arriving before midnight of April 11, 1861.

On April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate batteries opened fire, firing for 33 straight hours, on the fort. Edmund Ruffin, noted Virginian agronomist and secessionist, claimed that he fired the first shot on Fort Sumter. His story has been widely believed, but Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, commanding a battery of two mortars on James Island fired the first shot at 4:30 A.M. (Detzer 2001, pp. 269–71).

 The garrison returned fire, but it was ineffective, in part because Major Anderson did not use the guns mounted on the highest tier, the barbette tier, where the gun detachments would be more exposed to Confederate fire. On April 13, the fort was surrendered and evacuated.

During the attack, the Union colors fell. Lt. Norman J. Hall risked life and limb to put them back up, burning off his eyebrows permanently. No Union soldiers died in the actual battle though a Confederate soldier bled to death having been wounded by a misfiring cannon. One Union soldier died and another was mortally wounded during the 27th shot of a 100 shot salute, allowed by the Confederacy.

Afterwards the salute was shortened to 50 shots. Accounts, such as in the famous diary of Mary Chesnut, describe Charleston residents along what is now known as The Battery, sitting on balconies and drinking salutes to the start of the hostilities.For more information, go to www.fortsumter.com

A special military decoration, known as the Gillmore Medal, was later issued to all Union service members who had performed duty in Fort Sumter during the opening battle of the American Civil War.

The Fort Sumter Flag became a popular patriotic symbol after Maj. Anderson returned North with it. The flag is still displayed in the fort's museum. The Fort Sumter Flag is a historic United States flag with a distinctive, diamond-shaped pattern of 33 stars. The flag was lowered by Major Robert Anderson on April 14, 1861 when he surrendered the fort, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, at the outset of the American Civil War.

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