where were the first shots of the civil war fired
April 14 marks the date 150 years ago that the first person was killed in the Civil War â but there's more to the story. The First To Die. The first shots of the War Between the States were fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor in 1861. Federal troops, under command of Maj. Robert Anderson, surrendered to Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard after an artillery bombardment that had begun on April 12.