Up next, mark maloy describes the events of 1861 when federal guns opened fire on ft. Sumpter. Welcome back to the emerging civilian virtual symposium. Our next speaker today comes to us from our sister site, emerging revolutionary war. Mark is a historian with the National Park service and hes, like, what can i do thats revolutionary war . Im like, this is the civil war. Hes like whoa. We decided we would let him talk about ft. Sumpter because its as close we can get to the war. Mark is a delightful historian. I wish i could get him to laugh on queue. His most distinctive feature is his laugh. Were delighted to have him to come here today to speak about the first shots of the civil war at ft. Sumpter. Mark . Thank you very much for that introduction, chris. And its a pleasure to be able to speak at this symposium for the emerging civil war. We love to have had done it in person, but being able to do it digitally like this is a wonderful way to do it, as well. But yeah, as chris mentioned, my main passion is the American Revolutionary war, but you know, i work for the National Park service and we take care of a lot of important civil war sites and actually started my career with the National Park service as an intern down at fort sumter and fort moltry in charleston, South Carolina and i worked there for about a year and charleston, South Carolina is a beautiful town. Theres a lot of history and revolutionary war history and most people associate it with its Civil War History and the war started there in 1861 in april and over the next 45 minutes what i will do is go over the buildup to the first shots of the civil war there, and going to tell you about the battle that happened on april 12th and april 13th and then im going to tell you what happened to fort sumter in the city following that for the rest of the worry and then whats there today and encourage you if you get a chance to go down and visit at some point, hopefully after covid and be able to check out a lot of these important historical sites that are pretty well preserved out there. I really love the battles at fort sumter and theres a lot of highprofile characters and personalities involved in the opening shots of the war and im going to go through some of those as we talk today. Fort sumter is a microcosm of the civil war and how it started off as this kind of gentlemanly, chivalric engagement that was remarkably bloodless that led to the bloodiest war in American History and the war really evolves where there are atrocities happening and it becomes a bloody war in Charleston Harbor towards the end and it is also really an important story to know and understand. If you study the civil war, historians often are debating the causes of secession and why the south seceded and its also, secession didnt fessly mean there would be a shooting war so its important to understand how the first shots came to be fired and to understand why the war broke out, as well and fort sumter at its time was a symbol. It was highly symbolic and it still is to this very day, so it is really important to understand, as well, but the story of fort sumter starts with the secession of South Carolina which happened on december 20, 1860 after Abraham Lincoln was elected in november and they held their convention. Originally, it was in columbia and then it went to charleston and it was a hotbed for secession and there were a lot of secessionists there and they were eager to leave the union and on december 20th they vote to secede from the union and that day was filled in charleston in the city with all sort of celebrations and there were fireworks, bonfire, military parades and all sorts of things as they struck out on their own and the broad side and it was in the charleston mercury proclaimed loudly that the union is dissolved, but in order to understand, you have to see what the geography looks like and about that time in 1861, youll notice its on a peninsula by the ashley and cooper rivers. Charlestonians like to say, charleston is where the ashley and cooper rivers combine to form the atlantic ocean, but you could see charleston is surrounded by main islands and historically were in that harbor to defend the city against really Foreign Invasion and so you can see just off of the side of the city is a small little shoal with the fortification called castle pigmy right here. Just to the south is the city of james island called fort johnson and here in the middle of the harbor on an island was fort sumter, and then over here on Sullivans Island on the north end of the harbor side was fort moltry and it was the four principle forts and it was fort moltry where most of the United States soldiers who were there at that time were stationed and so this is the commander of the Union Soldiers and they were in charleston when South Carolina seceded and here is Charles Anderson and he is in the first u. S. Artillery and really only about 85 men that hes commanding that is in charleston and its important to realize how small the United States army was at the outset of the war. You only have 15,000 Union Soldiers across the entire nation at the time, and so you know, they were spread out all across the country and like i said, less than 100 in Charleston Harbor and of those 85 men, eight were musicians in the regimental band. So it was a pretty sleepy post and most of the men, its interesting who were in the first u. S. Artillery were immigrants and they came a lot of them came from ireland and germany and the major is an interesting figure, too, because hes actually a southerner, and hes from kentucky and he wasnt for cessation and he wasnt for any sort of war and he wasnt for any war that he fore saw coming and he was in a tricky situation here because basically, it came down to Property Rights in Charleston Harbor where these federal forts and these installations were part of the new part of the republic of South Carolina or part of the United States government and thats where a lot of the argument will come over as far as who should fire the first shot, but hes his father was with George Washington in the battles of princeton and he had many other officers under his command who would go on to play Important Roles during the war he had lieutenant normal hall, and same thing with Samuel Crawford who was a surgeon and he had a lieutenant Jefferson Davis not Jefferson Davis who was the president of the confederate state, but jefferson c. Davis who would go on to fight in the western theater of the war and captain Truman Seymour would go on to lead into battle. So its really interesting how many of his officers ended up having Important Roles later in the war this is probably one of the officers under his command there at fort moltry who would have a big war later, too, and he was captain at the time and would go on to again have a big role at gettysburg and hes proebl probably more famous today. People think he started the game of baseball, which is not true, but thats how he was remembered. Most of the officers that were under Robert Anderson were not abolitionists and were not really republican, but Abner Doubleday was and hes very outspoken about it and a lot of the people in charleston did not like that. So he was singled out in a lot of newspapers for a lot of their vitriol, but hes going to be outspoken in his defense of the union and in his wanting to get rid of slavery. Well, Robert Anderson felt what happened was South Carolina militias started flowing into the city of charleston. Anderson didnt think that he was going to be able to hold his position at fort moltry and on december 26th hes going to make a bold move. Hes going to move his entire course across the harbor to fort sumter. This act in of itself some south carolinians saw as an act of war. He cannot think he could pull fort moltry and southerners would fire into his men, so he didnt think he would be able to hold that position. So he moves over to fort sumter. This is an image showing them raising the American Flag inside fort sumter. There was a painting done later and its very interesting because it gives you a glimpse on the inside of fort sumter. Fort sumter was started in 1829 and it was still under construction when anderson moves his men there in december 1860 so theyre still working on it 30 years after it started. As you can see, inside the fort it was almost 90 complete. You can see there are imposing walls that stood 50 feet high, there were three tiers of artillery placements and the fort was pretty massive for that time and they were able originally it was built to hold over 600 men. Of course, anderson doesnt have that many and hes not going to be able to use the canons, and it was built to hold 135 canons and there were only 60 in the fort at this time, about because of his manpower hes only going to be able to man about ten canons during the actual battle, but let me also show you, this is what it looked like from the outside and fort sumter was a pretty imposing fortress sitting in the middle of the harbor, and whats going to happen is once the charlestonians wake up and they see a large American Flag flying over fort sumter, theyre outraged and so immediately, governor Francis Pickens is going to order all of the all of the installations around the harbor to be seized by South Carolina troops. So here you can see the image of some of the South Carolina militia taking over castle pinkney. This time they didnt have a symbol for their state yet. You can see theyre carrying a flag with the star on it and they can take off the boat and quickly the South Carolinas will adopt as their symbol the palmetto tree, and that was actually fort moltry was the site of a famous revolutionary battle back in 1776 and during the battle, the fort that was at that location was made out of palmetto trees and the soft wood of the palmetto tree absorbed the shock of british canon balls and a british invasion force was pushed back in june 1776, and South Carolinas going to adopt this as their symbol and youll still see it to this day on South Carolinas state flag is the palmetto tree and that harkens back to the revolutionary history and the local charleston Militia Group thats going to be stationed over on Morris Island during the initial bombardment of fort sumter. So this kind of gives you a good map and it gives you a good view of what it looked like in Charleston Harbor, in 1861. You can see Sullivans Island. They took fort moltry and started building floating batteries. They built a floating battery which was basically a raft they put cannons on almost iron clad and it would float and they could fire from there and they can take this island and Morris Island would play an Important Role not only during the first battle and later in the war, as well, and that position theyre going to fortify that island, as well. And it was hand by students at the citadel in charleston and in january 1861, president buchanon is going to send a ship to resupply and, and as the ship is entering, as the ship was the star of the west and as the ship was entering Charleston Harbor, it fires on the ship and theyre going to fire a few rounds as warning shots and then they hit the ship. And it fires back and it will turn around and leave, but this is a drawing that you can see the citadel cadets firing on the star of the west. You know . Some people claim these are the first shots of the civil war. And there is no return fire so what basically happens is it goes back into a stalemate in Charleston Harbor ask try to figure out whats going to happen next. So basically what happens as the stalemate continue, six more Southern States will secede from the union in january, february and march of 1861. They come together in february in montgomery, alabama, and form the Confederate States of america. Theyll create their own constitution and create their own government and elect Alexander Stephens as president and Vice President and they start forming an army. The new Confederate States are going to appoint this man, Pierre Gustav Beauregard as the general in command of the Confederate Forces in Charleston Harbor. Now hes a really interesting character, as well. He actually resigned from being superintendent at westpoint to join the confederacy, who was his professor . None other than major Robert Anderson. Now you have the pupil and his teacher on opposite side of this that will turn out to be the first battlefield of the civil war. Now sumter is going to continue to sit there as a symbol of the impasse thats happened in the country at that time. Theres a woman, mary chestnut who has a wonderful civil war diary that was in charleston during this time, and mary chestnut writes, in april 1861 in the beginning of the month, there stands fort sumter and thereby hangs peace or war and she also refers to the fact that ones heart is in ones mouth all of the time. So theres this constant fear that eventually war would break out and Charleston Harbor would be the scene of it. Basically whats happening is nobody is sure of whats going to happen with this situation once president lincoln becomes president and that ops march ha on march 41861. How is he going to handle the situation differently than buchanon . There are numerous political attempts to avert war. There is a Peace Convention in washington, d. C. There are numerous compromises like the compromise to push off war. A peace delegation from the Confederate States is sent to washington, but all these are rejected and lincolns going to reject acknowledging the Confederate States of america, believing that secession was illegal and it had no actual authority. So all of the communication between the United States government and South Carolina in the confederates will be through governor Francis Pickens who they viewed as legitimate, but lincoln believed that the United States should hold the fort. Now something was happening on the ground there because anderson and his men were running out of food and supplies. He wasnt going to be able to stay there forever. He was running out of food and supplies so what is lincoln going to do . Lincoln will come up with an idea to send a relief force to just deliver food and supplies to andersons men, but if they were opposed, if they were fired on they would bring reinforcements, as well. The confederate government views this, delivering the food, but you know, as an act of war because again, they didnt believe they had the right to the fort. So on april 4th, the relief expedition is sent by lincoln to Charleston Harbor. On april 10th, president Jefferson Davis tells beauregard to tell anderson to evacuate the fort immediately and if he doesnt, to reduce the fort. The next day on april 11, 1861, this man you see here is james chestnut. Mary chestnuts husband who used to be senator from South Carolina who had resigned and was now a colonel in the Confederate Army who was an aide to beauregard. He along with captain stephen d. Lee and Alexander Chisholm will go out to fort sumter and they go out there and meet with anderson and they tell him his options and anderson says that hes going to be that hes going to be starved out in just four days and that he will leave then. Chestnuts going to take that message back to beauregard. They discuss it, and around midnight, theyre going to go back out one more time and they say basically that they would need to leave immediately, and anderson doesnt agree to this, and so chestnut tells anderson, well, then, we will fire on you in exactly one hour and the time was 3 30 in the morning. His wife is back in charleston. She writes in her diary that at that time, i do not pretend to go to sleep. How can i . If anderson does not accept terms at 4 00 the orders are he shall be fired upon. I begin to count four bells, and i begin to hope. I sprang out of bed and on my kne kne knees i prayed as i never prayed before. Right after chestnut meets with anderson, his group is going to go over to james island to fort johnson. At fort johnson they were joined also by a former virginia congressman who you see over on the right side here named roger pryor, and roger pryor was a fireeater. He was really pushing to get virginia to secede, but they hadnt at that point, and whats going to happen is chestnuts going to tell the commander of the mortar battery there who is this man that you see on the left and his name was captain george s. James who would actually die later in the war at the battle of south mountain. He gives him the command to fire the first shot at 4 30. James is going to give roger pryor, the opportunity to fire the first shot and pryor demurs and he says he cannot fire the first gun of the war. So instead a lieutenant henry s. Farley is given the command to fire and hell yank the lanyard and fire the teninch mortar and it goes over the sky and explains and that was the signal to open fire on fort sumter and this was the first shot of the civil war. Some people say that was arent the first shot, and often you hear the first shot was this man who fired the first shot, and this guy is Edmund Ruffin who is a really fascinating, historical figure. He was very much a fireeater. He actually gained National Fame for being an agriculturist from the civil war. He was from virginia and basically from 1855 on, he devoted himself to nothing, but preaching secession. Sometimes known as the father of secession. He travels all across the country giving speeches. He writes pamphlets and always looking to provoke secession, and he actually snuck in and was able to witness the hanging of john brown and he went down to charleston to watch the secession of South Carolina and he goes out to Morris Island and here he is, almost 70 years old and the palmetto guards allow him into their company. You can see hes wearing the company of palmetto guards and theyre going to give him the opportunity to fire the first shot after the signal went off, and hes at the iron battery which is right there on morris isla island and he yanks the lanyard and his is the first shot that will hit fort sumter. He fires and hits the fort. Abner doubleday, he was in the fort, actually remembers hitting first shot and he believes that came with compliments of mr. Ruffin. Mr. Ruffin will keep a diary throughout the great war which is a great resource to not only see what he was thinking and a civilians perspective of the whole war and when he finds out about the defeat of general lees army and the collapse of the confederacy, rather than to submit to yankee rule, he is actually going to put his rifle in his mouth and shoot himself in the head, commit suicide. So some argue he fired the first and the last shot of the civil war, but once the battery opens up on fort sumter, there is no response. There are 43 cannons surrounding fort sumter that are all firing on the fort and at first, major anderson is trying to conserve his powder so he doesnt fire back for a couple of hours and its not until 7 00 a. M. That the union will fire back the first shot and that was fired by abner double day so he fired the first shot in return. All of a sudden now you have both sides firing back at each other and this is going go on really for hours and hours, and every two minutes the confederates are firing from different batteries all around the entire island. Here you can see an image of them firing on the fort and the bombardment will last 34 hours and in the city of charleston you can see people ran to rooftops and they ran to watch the bombardment and similar to first manassas where civilians were watching this battle. Some were celebrating and weeping, as well, and you can see the batteries firing on all sides and you see smoke billowing out of fort sumter, as well, in addition to artillery shells and artillery shots theyre also firing a hotshot where it was basically where they would take a cannon ball and put it in a furnace until it got red hot and they were used to fire on ships so they would catch them on fire and sink them and they were trying to get the buildings inside there caught on fire and they start getting successful and they hit some of the buildings and there are fires and theyre trying to put out fires within the fort and it starts getting pretty chaotic inside the fort. Anderson only has six canons that hes firing back at everybody. Meanwhile, while this bombardment is going on, who appears on the coast, but the expedition that was sent to relief major anderson . The confederates were scared that this group was going to try and land and try and attack them or join in on the fight, but they dont join in at all. Much to the consternation of the defenders of fort sumter because they kind of are wondering if theyll get relief or help during this battle, but that doesnt happen and here you see an image of the fire and the firing going on. Doubleday writes memoirs where he described pretty much everything that happened and there here is a great quote that shows you how kchaotic, and the immense mortar shells after sailing high in the air came down in a vertical direction and buried themselves in the prairie ground. Their explosions shook the fort like an earthquake. Overnight of the 12th the union will stop firing to try to conserve their ammunition, but theyll resume on the morning of the 13th. Now on the 13th, theyre going to fire and theyre going to catch the officers quarters on fire in the fourth and that leads to a larger fire and there was fear that there is powder magazine which would blow up the entire fort. Around this time around 1 00 p. M. On april 13th when the cannon ball hits the union flag with the fort and knocks it to the ground and quickly, some of the union defenders including Sergeant Peter hart that you see climb up and they replace as a hail of cannon balls are flying around and replace the American Flag up on top of the fort. During this when the confederates see the flag go down, a big cheer erupts and they think that anderson is surrendering and immediately, the United States senator, former United States senator, Lewis Wigfall who is watching it happen, he quickly hops into a rowboat and rows out to the fort and you can see he immediately starts negotiating with major anderson through the hes basically saying are you surrendering the fort . Anderson, at first doesnt want to, but he quickly realizes with everything happening that he should surrender and he agrees to wigfall that hell surrender the fort and puts up a white flag. Wigfall falls back and when beauregard cea beauregard sees the white flag go up, wigfall had no authority to negotiate a surrender and after discussing with chestnut anderson agrees to surrender the fort, but they would be given pretty generous terms. Theyd be able to take their flag down and salute it with an cannon salute. Theyd all be able to go back to new york and take their personal possessions and their flags. So they agreed to this on the next day, april 14th is when the union prepares to leave and while theyre firing their salute, it was supposed to be a 100gun salute to the American Flag. When they get to round 47, disaster happens. Private daniel howe is loading the cannon when all of a sudden the cannon goes off and rips off his arm and hes going to bleed out and die and some of the powder ignites powder around the cannon and an explosion happens and around a half dozen are wounded and one of the other men wounded would be mortally so. These, you could argue are the First Military fatalities of the civil war because when anderson surrendered the fort hed asked, did the confederates have any casualties and they said no. Anderson didnt have casualties during the actual battle either and he said thank god because he did not want to be responsible for these first deaths and this accident that happens, like i said, are the first deaths. So well stop it at a 50gun salute and they didnt do the 100gun salute and they fired on to the sheep and they went with the relief expedition back to new york and edmond ruffin carrying the palmetto flag and theyll raise the palmetto flag and the new Confederate States of america flag over fort sumter. What was the response to this . First of all, sumter becomes a rallying cry. The confederates had fired on fort sumter and the American Flag and across communities in the north, people are joining up army. 75,000 volunteers to suppress con fed raese. You can imagine how big an army that is that hes talking about and these men just calling out those volunteers that will drive the state of virginia to secede and later join the confederacy in the three upper states and thus the civil war began. Now because of that, the focus on the war quickly goes to virginia where a lot of the fightings going to happen such as manassas, but you know, fort sumter stood as a symbol of where the first shot was fired. What happens to anderson and his men . They go back to new york. Tho thousands of people come to new york to see the actual flag that they had brought back with them that had been fired by the confederates and many of them will go off and do much bigger things during the civil war and some of them are going to die of disease and other things like that during the war. Probably one of the more interesting stories is the man that you see in the back row second from the right and his name was Richard Kidder meade and he was a virginian who had fought with andersons men during this battle, but when virginia secedes on april 17th, he resigns and goes and joins the Confederate Army and will actually fight against the union before he dies of disease during the war. But charleston, the union will come back later that year to South Carolina and the confederates are very quick to fortify the entire harbor. So you can see the massive amount of earth works around the harbor and like i said, Morris Island will be important and the union will eventually make that as one of their headquarters. Eventually theyll get on to Morris Island to get a foothold and theyll take charleston by land and theyre going to meet utter disaster at the battle of secessionville in june 1962 which dan welch gave a wonderful presentation of last years emerging civil war conference. After that disaster, theyre going to keep trying to capture fort sumter by sea. Theyll do a large iron clad attack on the fort in april 1863 thats bloodily repulsed and so then the union, like i said, once they get on Morris Island down here and theyll make multiple attempts to take it, and if you saw morning glory, thats repulsed there, as well. Because of manpower and other reasons theyll abandon Morris Island. Theyre less than half mile from fort sichl ter and our ability had glo are grown, and it was only accurate to a problem. They is have artillery thats accurate for four or five, ask there was the swamp angel into the city of charleston, which is a distance of fort mers. The they will continue it fire on it almost continuously in 1864 and 1865 and its just going to be an unrelntienting attack to capture fort sumter and it dem ol earnes the walls and this is what it looked like by that point. The rifle artillery just smashes through the brick walls and what they dont realize is its making it stronger because all of this mess fell down and basically turned fort sumter into one giant earth work and the connfederates would be livig like rats on the inside of it and fighting back and all sort of attempts to put landing groups on there to try and capture it, and those are going to be repulsed, as well. So they just kind of resort to that. The war kind of starts evolving and South Carolina refuses because of the symbolic importance of fort sumter and it refuses to give up on fort sumter. This is an image of Conrad Wise Chapman who painted all sorts of scenes from that time around Charleston Harbor, and you can see this lone confederate century standing there with the Confederate Flag in the distance. You can see the Union Blockade and you can seymouris island where they were shelling fort sumter from, but like i said, not only were they shelling fort sumter, they were hitting the city of charleston. So what Confederate Forces and theyre going to put Union Prisoners of war into charleston in the city and let the union know they might hit some of their own men. In retaliation to this, the union will take confederate prisoners down and theyll put them on the edge of Morris Island there to kind of use them as human shields. So here again, like i said, how this war had evolved from this gentlemans warfare to by the end, theyre literally using humans as or using prisoners as human shields. But over the course of and this is another shot of what fort sumter looked like. Over the course of two years, the union will fire 2500 tons of metal into that island, and like i said, just turn it into one giant earth work, but they never do capture it. Theyre never able to actually capture fort sumter, and the confederates will hold charleston all of the way until february 1865 and by that point, sherman had completed his march to the sea down to savannah and he was marching through South Carolina and people were wondering if they would go to charleston or columbia. He goes to columbia instead of charleston and it made indefensible the city of charleston, on february 17, 1865 evacuate Charleston Harbor and they evacuate fort sumter. Union soldiers finally get back fort sumter and they raise the American Flag over it. They suffered a fire in 1861 that burned out a lot of the city, as well and many of the Union Soldiers wanted revenge for having started the war. I doubt any city was punished in washington, but as her people had for years, the judgment of the world will be that charleston deserved the fate that befell her. On april 14, 1865, major anderson who is now general, he returns to fort sumter to ceremoniously reraise the same American Flag over fort sumter. And the celebration that happened that day was overshadowed that same night was when president Abraham Lincoln was shot in washington, d. C at forbes theater. Today if you visit the fort, it was used by the u. S. Military in the 1940s and now its a National Park service site. You will see the immediate thing you notice is there is no more of those three tiers of walls and theres only one level of the brick wall around the island and you will see this large, black battery that was built during the spanishamerican war, but now sits in the mid evaludl the Parade Ground and very little from the fabric of 1861 still exist, but it does exist on different places in the island and inside this battery today is a Wonderful Museum that has a lot of objects related to the actual battle. This is what it looks like on the Parade Ground inside today. Some of the case mates are still surviving so you can check those out and you can see the ruins over here of the different barracks and officers quarters and thats where the powder magazine was, as well and as well as a monument to the defenders of the fort. You can still see some of the actual artillery that was fired during that siege from 1863 to 1865 by the union for Morris Island still embedded in some of the brick walls which is amazing that you can still see that piece of history on the forts walls today. Inside the museum there you will see the actual flag. This is the storm flag that andersons men flew during the battle which is a Pretty Amazing artifact. They also had a larger garrison flag thats at Liberty Square which is another run by the National Park service down there. Fort sumter, if you do get a chance to go down there, think, its not the only site to see. This is what Fort Moultrie looks like and this is where some of the first shots were fired by the confederates and it was the site of the revolutionary war battle and they interpret all of the american Coastal Defense from 1776 on up to world war ii. Probably one of the neatest sites if you get down there is to go to fort johnson, where the first initial shell was fired, and there denoting that as the location of the first shot of the civil war. Morris island is really cool. Thats where fort wagner was and where Edmund Ruffin was, but that has changed a lot due to the tides and theres nothing out there and there are no monuments or markers like that and theyre only accessible by boat so its difficult to get out there. You have multiple sites to check out there, but charleston overall is a beautiful city and a lot of people associate it at the initial war, and even before the revolutionary war and a lot of the original buildings and sites still exist. Its a wonderful place to visit and to involve yourself in a lot of history there, but yes, thank you very much. Oh, if you want to read more about these. If you want to read about the initial battle i definitely recommend allegiance by david detzer. If you want to know about the siege of charleston that happened from 63 and 64 read gate of hell by stephen weiss, and the former historian, rick hatch who had the privilege of working at fort sumter will have a book called thunder in the harboret harbor and cover all of this and hopefully include the sites you can visit. Thank you very much, and i appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. Week nights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Following more than four years of world war, 51 founding members signed the United Nations charter in promoting global peace and justice. On october 24, 1945, the u. N. Was officially established. We feature five films beginning with the signing of the charter and thats tonight at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Up next, author kevin pawlak, talks about the loudoun campaign between Confederate Forces under stewart and various unions in the army of the potomac. This was hosted by the emerging civil war blog. Welcome back to the emerging civil war virtual symposium. Im chris misdowski. I want to give thanks to the friendsat