I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms at four, the orders are, he shall be fired upon. I count four, St. Michael's bells chime out and I begin to hope. At half-past four the heavy booming of a cannon. I sprang out of bed, and on my knees prostrate I prayed as I never prayed before. - Diary entry by Mary Chesnut, wife of a South Carolinian politician who hours before had been part of a delegation presenting to US Maj. Robert Anderson letters demanding the evacutation of federal troops from Ft. Sumter.
150 years ago today in Charleston, South Carolina's harbor, a bloodless 34-hour artillery dual between one group of militarized Americans and another inside an out-gunned federal installation, Fort Sumter, began and was the first contested act of violence in a civil war that would end 4 years later to the day and claim 618,000 American lives.
Some 40,000 shells were fired, the vast majority of them by the Confederate forces besieging the fort. The fort's commander, Maj. Anderson, a pro-slavery former slave-owner, formally surrendered the fort on April 14. There was an official surrender ceremony during which one Union soldier, Pvt. Daniel Hough--born in 1825 in Tipperary, Ireland--was killed and another, Pvt. Edward Gallway, was mortally wounded when cannon cartridges accidentally ignited during what was to have been the 50th discharge of a rolling 100-gun salute.
After seeing to the burial of Pvt. Hough in the fort, Maj. Anderson and his garrison along with the 33-star American flag that had been lowered from the fort were taken aboard the Confederate steamship Isabela and then the Union steamer Baltic to the North. On April 20, 1861, Anderson placed the flag atop the statue of George Washington in New York City's Union Square during a pro-Union rally attended by 100,000 to 250,000 people, the largest public gathering in North America's history up to that time. (Photo: the only known photograph of the Union Square rally. Click to enlarge.)
Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On December 26, 1860, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surreptitiously moved his small command from the indefensible Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress controlling the entrance of Charleston Harbor. An attempt by U.S. President James Buchanan to reinforce and resupply Anderson using the unarmed merchant ship, Star of the West, failed when she was fired upon by shore batteries on January 9, 1861. South Carolina authorities then seized all Federal property in the Charleston area, except for Fort Sumter.
.....The resupply of Fort Sumter became the first crisis of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. He notified the Governor of South Carolina, Francis W. Pickens, that he was sending supply ships, which resulted in an ultimatum from the Confederate government: evacuate Fort Sumter immediately. Major Anderson refused to surrender. Beginning at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, the Confederates bombarded the fort from artillery batteries surrounding the [fort].
via en.wikipedia.org
If you have a pair of those simple red and green "3-D" glasses, you can view a 3-D photo presentation (technically a stereoview-style presentation) featuring vintage photos of Fort Sumter on the Civil War Trust website.
Bottom image: the Fort Sumter flag.
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