This week marks the 155th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sumter, which was the spark that formally started the Civil War. While none of 80 Union soldiers on Fort Sumter died during the 34-hour bombardment of the island fortification off the coast of South Carolina, the episode was the first formal act of aggression between the Union and Confederacy. Its anniversary warrants attention not only because it was the first battle in a war that took 620,000 American lives, but also because the conditions and controversy surrounding Fort Sumter embodies some of the larger conflicts between the North and South at the time.
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States, much to the chagrin of many of the southern states. Soon after, the South Carolina state legislature met in Charleston, a city that did not cast a single vote for Lincoln, and voted to secede from the United States of America. Just over a month after Lincoln was elected, the legislature voted 169-0 approving the secession declaration that decried the “frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States by the Federal Government." The document notes that secession was principally motivated by “increasing hostility on the part of non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery”, and the fear that Lincoln would continue that trend.Advocates of secession felt justified in their position because the Constitution did not expressly prohibit secession, and reasoned that it is a right reserved to the states by the 10th amendment. They also were inspired by the Declaration of Independence, and borrowed some of the language from that document in their declaration of secession.
Despite the inflammatory language and clear challenge to the federal government, South Carolinian’s did not anticipate a violent reaction to the secession. Senator James Chesnut Jr., for example, proclaimed that a thimble would be able to hold all of the blood that will be shed in reaction to the emerging formation of the Confederacy. As an expression of its sovereignty, South Carolina began to seize all federal buildings, including federal forts, that fell within its borders. United States Major Robert Anderson and 80 other soldiers were assigned to a fort in Charleston Harbor when South Carolina seceded, but he moved his men to Fort Sumter as he thought it was a safer, less penetrable base. Major Anderson refused to give up control of Fort Sumter and a precarious situation began taking hold in Charleston Harbor.
On March 4th, 1861, Lincoln was inaugurated and declared that “no state, upon its own mere notion, can lawfully get out of the Union." While he did not want to provoke a bloody war between the Northern and Southern states, Lincoln said that he could use force to “hold, occupy, and possess” the property of the federal government, like Fort Sumter.
Both Lincoln and South Carolina wanted control over Fort Sumter, and Lincoln ordered that a federal ship be sent with supplies to assist Anderson and his troops. Before the boat arrived, however, the Confederate government sent a group of representatives to Fort Sumter and offered Anderson an ultimatum – either surrender the fort or face their fire.
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate Brigadier General PGT Beauregard ordered 800 of his soldiers to open fire on the Fort. The barrage was deafening, and the citizens of Charleston observed the explosions, smoke, and flames from their rooftops over the next 34 hours. Anderson surrendered the Fort as fires were starting to engulf the entire complex, and he and his men were permitted by Beauregard to conduct a 100-gun salute and leave peacefully. As the Union soldiers were leaving, however, one died in an accidental explosion and was the only casualty from the affair.
In reaction to this provocation, on April 15th Lincoln signed a document that proclaimed that an “insurrection” was occurring and called 75,000 men to arms. He also called for a special session of Congress for July, where he would address both houses requesting the formal raising of an army. Lincoln’s calling forth of the “militia of the States of the Union” marked the official beginning of the Civil War, which went on to rage for over four years.
It wasn’t until 1869 that, in Texas v. White, the Supreme Court officially declared South Carolina’s secession unconstitutional. Given that the Constitution, “in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union”, Chief Justice Salmon Chase put to rest the constitutional questions over secession after it had been initially dealt with militarily.
Intense debates between the relative scope of federal and state power, and even federal versus state ownership of land, have continued to rage since Fort Sumter and the end of the Civil War. This anniversary puts these disputes in context, and shows us how far we have come as a nation since the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
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