Fort Sumter

Examples of Fort Sumter in the following topics:

• Attack on Fort Sumter

  • The Battle of Fort Sumter was the first armed conflict of the Civil War.
  • The Battle of Fort Sumter was the first battle of the American Civil War.
  • By 1861, Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was one of two federal possessions remaining in Southern territory.
  • The Fort Sumter crisis was waiting for President Lincoln upon his inauguration on March 4, 1861.
  • He received news that Fort Sumter had only six weeks of rations left.

• Secession of the South

  • However, efforts by the Confederate States to forcibly remove U.S. troops and federal presence from its territory, culminating in the Battle of Fort Sumter, pushed the two factions irreversibly toward war.
  • After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and Lincoln's subsequent call for troops on April 15, four more states declared their secession.
  • The U.S. government did not declare war on the Confederate States, but it did conduct military efforts beginning with a presidential proclamation issued April 15, 1861, which called for troops to recapture Southern forts and suppress a Southern rebellion.
  • Immediately following Fort Sumter, the Confederate Congress declared war against the United States and the Civil War officially began.

• The Battles: 1863–1865

  • Fort Monroe in Virginia; Fort Sumter in South Carolina; and Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor, all in Florida, were the remaining Union-held forts in the Confederacy, and Lincoln was determined to hold them all.
  • Under orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, troops controlled by the Confederate government bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12, forcing its capitulation.
  • Most Northerners rallied behind Lincoln's call for all states to send troops to recapture the forts and to preserve the Union.
  • Grant, who won victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, and the Battle of Vicksburg, which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River and is considered one of the turning points of the war.

• Confederate Diplomacy

  • In fact, the U.S. government never actually declared war on the Confederacy, instead merely expressing a need to recapture federal forts and suppress an ongoing rebellion, as in Lincoln's proclamation on April 15, 1861.
  • Immediately following the Battle of Fort Sumter, the Confederate Congress proclaimed, "... war exists between the Confederate States and the Government of the United States, and the States and Territories thereof… .”
  • Even before Fort Sumter, U.S.

• Buchanan's Waiting Game

  • Before Buchanan left office, all arsenals and forts in the seceding states were lost (except Fort Sumter, off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina).

• Origins of the War

  • Nationalists refused to recognize the secessions, and the U.S. government in Washington refused to abandon its forts in Confederate territory.
  • War began in April 1861 when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, a major U.S. fortress in South Carolina.

• Naval Actions

  • The first shots of the naval battles of the Civil War were fired on April 13, 1861, during the Battle of Fort Sumter, by the Revenue Service cutter USRC Harriet Lane. 
  • The Union ironclads were particularly effective along the Mississippi and its tributaries where they were able to direct heavy fire against Confederate forts and strongholds with limited return fire.

• Bleeding Kansas

  • On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, less than three months before the Battle of Fort Sumter that began the Civil War.

• The Treaty of Fort Stanwix

  • The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was one of several treaties signed between Native Americans and the United States after the American Revolution.
  • The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty signed in October 1784 between the United States and its Native Americans at Fort Stanwix (located in present-day Rome, New York).
  • 1785 Treaty of Fort McIntosh with Wyandotte, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa leaders for lands in Ohio
  • 1786 Treaty of Fort Finney with Shawnee leaders for portions of Ohio

• Fort Ticonderoga

  • The capture of Fort Ticonderoga occurred in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War when a small force of Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold, overcame a small British garrison at the fort and looted the personal belongings of the garrison.
  • After seizing Ticonderoga, a small detachment captured the nearby Fort Crown Point on May 11.
  • The French had destroyed the powder magazine when they abandoned the fort, and the fort had fallen further into disrepair since then.
  • After the war began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the British General Thomas Gage realized the fort would require fortification; simultaneously, several colonists had the idea of capturing the fort.
  • Eventually, as many as 400 men arrived at the fort, which they plundered for liquor and other provisions.