page_title: Battle of Fort Sumter
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Fort Sumter / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Confederate flag flying over Fort Sumter -- photo from 1861. Image is a detail from a stereoscopic photograph taken by Alma A. Pelot on the morning of April 15, 1861.
context_page_description: The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the South Carolina militia, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army, that started the American Civil War. Following the declaration of secession by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, its authorities demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On December 26, Major Robert Anderson of the U.S. Army surreptitiously moved his small command from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress built on an island 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 it 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.
  During the early months of 1861, the situation around Fort Sumter increasingly began to resemble a siege. In March, Brigadier General P. G. T.
context_section_description: The bombardment of Fort Sumter was the first military action of the American Civil War. Following the surrender, Northerners rallied behind Lincoln's call for all states to send troops to recapture the forts and preserve the Union. With the scale of the rebellion apparently small so far, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days. Some Northern states filled their quotas quickly. There were so many volunteers in Ohio that within 16 days they could have met the full call for 75,000 men by themselves. Other governors from border states were undiplomatic in their responses. For example, Gov. Claiborne Jackson wrote, "Not one man will the state of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade", and Gov. Beriah Magoffin wrote, "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states." The governors of other states still in the Union were equally unsupportive. The call for 75,000 troops triggered four additional slave states to declare their secession from the Union and join the Confederacy. The ensuing war lasted four years, effectively ending in April 1865 with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomatox Courthouse.
  Charleston Harbor was completely in Confederate hands for almost the entire four-year duration of the war, leaving a hole in the Union naval blockade. Union forces conducted major operations in 1862 and 1863 to capture Charleston, first overland on James Island (the Battle of Secessionville, June 1862), then by naval assault against Fort Sumter (the First Battle of Charleston Harbor, April 1863), then by seizing the Confederate artillery positions on Morris Island (beginning with the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, July 1863, and followed by a siege until September). After pounding Sumter to rubble with artillery fire, a final amphibious operation attempted to occupy it (the Second Battle of Fort Sumter, September 1863), but was repulsed and no further attempts were made. The Confederates evacuated Fort Sumter and Charleston in February 1865 as Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman outflanked the city in the Carolinas Campaign. On April 14, 1865, four years to the day after lowering the Fort Sumter Flag in surrender, Robert Anderson (by then a major general, although ill and in retired status) returned to the ruined fort to raise the flag he had lowered in 1861.
  Two of the cannons used at Fort Sumter were later presented to Louisiana State University by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was president of the university before the war began.
caption: Confederate Flag flying in Fort Sumter after the 1861 surrender
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