Ft. Sumter

Other Information on Ft. Sumter Visitor's information on Ft. Sumter from the National Park Service Ft. Sumter history and tour from Charleston County Library. Covers entire war period 1860 - 1865 including the federal ironclad attack of April 1863, bombardments of the Confederate Garrison, Confederate Evacuation in 1865 and Federal Victory Celebration there four years after the original surrender, April 12, 1865. Crisis at Fort Sumter, 1861- This is a massive, intensely integrated treatment of the Fort Sumter Crisis of November 1860 - April 1861 on the server at Tulane University. A day by day calendar, biographies, graphics, maps, contemporary and period commentary organized chronoligically, thematically and interactively. There are many ways to use the site to explore what happened in Charleston and around the nation between the Election of Abraham Lincoln and the evacuation of the Fort by the Federals after the Confederate Bombardment. Photographic Images of Ft. Sumter after its Confederate occupation in 1861. A slide show of photos in the collection of the S.C. Historical Society. A poetic first person account of actions around Charleston harbor just prior to the 1861 Bombardment of Ft. Sumter. THE GUNS AND TROOPS AROUND FT. SUMTER By John Hamilton Cornish, written 1861. A truely unusual account with novel details. The Journal Of Thomas Abram Huguenin - Last Confederate Commander of Fort Sumter. Letter - Lt. Alexander Haskell to his parents. Haskell writes of the fall of Fort Sumter, April 17, 1861. Letter by General Beauregard on the Fall of Ft. Sumter, 1861. The Ironclad Attack of April 7, 1863 against Sumter begins the siege of Charleston. Fire at Ft. Sumter - December 11, 1863, Sumter's Confederate Garrison battles an unstopable underground fire and climbs from the burning ruins for a gesture of defiance which raises cheers from the surrounding Federal troops. The 27th. South Carolina Reenactors depict one of the units which held and garrisoned Sumter during the siege of Charleston when it became the most bombarded place in the western hemisphere. Image of Anderson Flag which is on display at the Fort. This is probably the most evocative single artifact related to the war in Charleston. When visiting the Fort, Author Shelby Foot paused to gaze at it a long time. Page from Slage History of locks showing a rim lock from Ft. Sumter

By William J. Hamilton, III

Note: This article was published in the Charleston Post and Courier following Pvt. Hamilton's day at Sumter as a Confederate Civil War Reenactor in June, 1994. This differs slightly from the previously published version.

Sumter is worn out with history.

In June, I spent the day at Ft. Sumter with my Civil War Reenacting unit as part of a living history demonstration. It was only my third visit to the fort in a Charleston lifetime. Aside from those visits, I have experienced the fort only through the distance across the harbor where it lies at the hazy limits of vision and memory.

My previous visits reflect the person I was. As a child, I was fascinated by the canons and improvised games around them. As a teenager, it was another opportunity to flirt. We were scolded by the ranger for stuffing the girls in the muzzles of the canons. These had been brief visits. The living history demonstration was a full day at the Fort.

I suppose there are Charlestonians who have never been there, much like New Yorkers who have never approached the Statue of Liberty. Every local can inform the visitor that Ft. Sumter is where the Civil War began. The question arises, however, of what is there now.

Of course the Civil War did not begin at Ft. Sumter. It began when a lanyard was pulled on a mortar at Ft. Johnson. Sumter was what the Civil War then began happening to. The war continued to happen to the Fort until the Federal garrison was forced to surrender, then through almost four years of Confederate occupation. Federal land and naval forces shelled the fort for two years. By late 1864, no functional large canon remained in the fort and a small garrison of Confederate infantry kept up their resistance from the tunnels which ran from the dank bombproof shelters to suffocating rifle slits. When Charleston fell and the Fort was reoccupied, only smashed bricks and ruins survived.

After the war, the Federal Government removed the rubble and sand the Confederates had piled up and returned the Fort to the same sort of ineffective and dangerously exposed configuration which had proved so deficient when the enemy began shelling. What was uncovered was only the bottom of three tiers of guns. They never fired a shot in anger again. Those remains are what the tourist and school child visit today.

Life at the fort has a rhythm. The tour boats come and go, each visit bringing a brief energetic occupation of the curious. Between tours, a handful of rangers do their business, but the fort is quiet. On the ramparts one becomes conscious of the sea that's relentless breeze sweeps in from the Atlantic. Sullivans and Morris Islands seem distant across the marsh and water which churns through the mouth of the harbor with the grey restlessness of volume and depth.

There is not a tree larger than a bush on the entire island. The isolation of the place between tours has an erie, abandoned silence. The enormous canon are frozen still, encased in layers of glossy, black paint. The rough, crumbled corners of brick are everywhere and tunnels go deeper than daylight into the walls. It is a hard place full of durable, impassive things.

In the great battle fields of that and other wars, visitors often remark of how peaceful the places seem. In those places grass and trees have worked over the spots until their lushness belies the violence they have seen. Not so at Sumter.

The place has been worn down by the power and energy of war. What survives is the fort's indestructible nub, sheltered by its own quivering wreckage through the long assualt. The grass of the small parade ground struggles with poor soil and limited water. It will never achieve the lush reassurance of other fields.

Above, the windy sky reaches down to the water all around, leaving the fort exposed to all directions and angles. The air of the windy sea reaches every defile and angle so that even in silence, no place is still. The great masses of brick and weapons are immovable however, so there is no soft zone of compromise between wind and wall.

In the quiet times of my daylong visit, I had opportunity to feel these things. The patina of sentimental remembrance is not there. The place belongs fully to hard, enduring things and the insubstantial wind.

The new museum being constructed in the fort is a jarring, air conditioned retreat from the Fort's harsh exterior. New exhibits will illustrate the facts of history, perhaps as well as the shattered walls outside illustrate its conseqences. Two flags are hung in its recesses, both pierced with shot and bullet. One, the Federal flag which was hauled down and, four years later, raised again. The other is the flag of the Palmetto Guard, raised in a victory which was supposed to have begun a six week war.

Soon a new tour boat dock and orientation center will be constructed on the Cooper River. Orientation and safety instruction will be conducted there, leaving visitors more time for sightseeing during their brief visit to the Fort. There will be more time on the little, rocky island to marvel at the heft of the Cannon and gaze out to the desolate sea.

There will be no better use of that extra time than to discover the worn hardness of the place, to marvel that men came there to live and fight where the soft, forgiving nature of the world seems so distant across the water and through the wind. .
About the Author William J. Hamilton, III
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