Fort Sumter
Where The American Civil War Began
We toured Fort Sumter, SC which was reduced to less than half its original size over the four years after Confederate's forced a surrender of the Federal's inside. The significance of this fort is that this is where conflict began leading to 620,000 Americans (North and South) dying in the Civil War. This is more than all the military deaths of ALL the other conflicts in American history combined! More Americans were killed fighting each other in 4 years than our 233 year history against outside threats. Decades of growing strife between North and South erupted in civil war on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on this Federal fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later. Union forces would try for nearly four years to take it back. On December 20, 1860 South Carolina delegates to a special secession convention voted unanimously to secede from the United States of America. In November, Abraham Lincoln had been elected President of the United States with little support from the southern states. The critical significance of this election was expressed in South Carolina’s Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession: “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of president of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” The Declaration claimed that secession was justified because the Federal government had violated the constitutional compact by encroaching upon the rights of the sovereign states.
South Carolina's Palmetto Flag
