③
The garrison flag (the remnants of which are shown in photograph no. 1) continued to mark Anderson’s occupation of the fort until April 11, 1861, when, having become torn, it was replaced by the 10-foot by 20-foot storm flag (no. 2) which flew during the subsequent two-day bombardment.
After the fort’s surrender on April 14, Anderson took both flags with him to New York City. There, following their display in a massive patriotic demonstration in Union Square, they were boxed up and placed in storage. The flags remained with the Anderson family until 1905, when they were presented to then Secretary of War William Howard Taft. The War Department transferred them to the National Park Service in 1954. They are now part of the collections of Fort Sumter National Monument. A third flag in the park’s collection is the 6-foot by 9-foot flag of the Palmetto Guards (no. 3), which was the first Southern banner to be raised over Sumter’s walls after Anderson’s evacuation.
On Sunday, April 14, Anderson and his garrison marched out of the fort with drums beating and colors flying and boarded the steamer Isabel to join the Federal fleet off the bar. The only fatality of the engagement occurred just prior to leaving when, on the 47th round of what was to have been a 100-gun salute to the United States flag, one of the guns discharged prematurely, exploding a pile of cartridges and causing the death of Pvt. Daniel Hough. Another man, Pvt. Edward Galloway, was mortally wounded and died several days later. The 50th round was the last. Now, as the Isabel carrying Anderson’s command steamed down the channel, the soldiers at the Confederate battery on Cummings Point lined the beach, heads uncovered, in silent tribute to Sumter’s defenders.
The following day, April 15, 1861, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 militia. Soon the States of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy. Civil war, so long dreaded, had begun.
The Struggle for Charleston, 1863-65
With Fort Sumter in Confederate hands, the port of Charleston became an irritating loophole in the Federal naval blockade of the Atlantic coast—doubly so because at Charleston “rebellion first lighted the flame of civil war.” As late as January 1863, vessels plied to and from Charleston and the Bahamas “with the certainty and promptness of a regular line,” bringing needed war supplies in exchange for cotton.
Capture of Port Royal Harbor on November 7, 1861, by a Federal fleet under Capt. Samuel F. Du Pont, however, had made possible land and sea operations against Charleston. In June 1862, an attempt was made by Federal Maj. Gen. David Hunter to push through to the city by James Island on the south. This ended in Union disaster at the bloody battle of Secessionville. Meanwhile, the Monitor-Virginia (Merrimack) action in Hampton Roads had demonstrated the feasibility of an “ironclad” naval expedition against Fort Sumter, the key to the harbor. Sumter, rebuilt and strengthened, was now a formidable work armed with some 95 guns and garrisoned with upwards of 500 men. By May 1862, the Navy Department seemed possessed of what then Rear Admiral Du Pont was calling a “morbid appetite” to capture Charleston. But the War Department, far from supplying the additional troops to Hunter’s command, withdrew units to reenforce Gen. George B. McClellan’s army in its campaign against Richmond, the Confederate capital.
On April 5, 1863, a fleet of nine Federal ironclads, armed with 32 heavy-caliber guns, appeared off Charleston bar. Seven were of the single-turret “cheesebox on a raft” Monitor-type; one, the Keokuk, was a double-turreted affair; and the last, the flagship New Ironsides, was an ironclad frigate. With ebb tide on the afternoon of the 7th, the “new-fangled” ironclads steamed single-file up the main ship channel east of Morris Island. The weather was clear and bright; the water “as stable as of a river.” By 3 o’clock, the Weehawken, the leading monitor, had come within range, and Fort Moultrie opened fire. The Passaic, second in line, responded. Fort Sumter held fire, its guns trained on a buoy at the turn of the channel. When the Weehawken came abreast of that point, Sumter’s right flank guns let loose. These were followed by all the guns on Sullivans Island, at Fort Moultrie, and at Cummings Point that could be brought to bear.
