 By early April, political tensions were mounting and Beauregard demanded that Sumter surrender before a planned Union expedition to re-provision the fort could arrive. Early on the morning of April 12, negotiations with Anderson had failed and aides of Beauregard, sent to deal personally with Anderson, ordered the first shots of the American Civil War to be fired from nearby Fort Johnson. The bombardment of Fort Sumter lasted for 34 hours. Subjected to thousands of rounds fired from batteries ringing the harbor, Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter on April 14. Biographer T. Harry Williams described the extravagant praise from throughout the Confederacy that "The Hero of Fort Sumter" received for his victory: "He was the South's first paladin."
