Brig. Gen. Pierre G. T. Beauregard, one of the South’s leading military engineers, commanded the Confederate forces at Charleston in April 1861 and again from August 1862 to May 1864. Ironically, Beauregard’s favorite teacher at West Point had been artillery instructor Robert Anderson, whose refusal to surrender Fort Sumter to his former pupil led to the opening shots of the Civil War.
Outward appearances, however, were deceiving. Unruffled decades of peace had induced glacial slowness and indifference in Washington. The fort was far from completed and, according to U.S. Army Surgeon Samuel W. Crawford who came to know the place well, “in no condition for defense.” Eight-foot-square openings yawned in place of gun embrasures on the second tier. Of the 135 guns planned for the gunrooms and the open terre-plein above, only 15 had been mounted. Most of these were 32 pounders; none was heavier. The barracks were unfinished and, where tenable, occupied by workmen. The officers’ quarters were also unfinished, and a large number of wooden structures “of the most temporary character” occupied the parade. These “served as storehouses for the tools and material of the workmen, while all over the parade lay sand and rough masonry, and sixty-six guns with their carriages and 5,600 shot and shell.”
By December 1860 time as well as money had run out, and the fort was about to take on a political significance far beyond the military function it was originally intended to serve. The long-smoldering sectional dispute between North and South had become like a powder keg. And Fort Sumter was the fuse that would ignite it.
Part 2 The Civil War Years
A Confederate battery at Fort Johnson on James Island pounds away at a virtually defenseless Fort Sumter in this hand-colored contemporary engraving of the April 1861 bombardment.
The first notice of the adoption of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession appeared in a special edition of the Charleston Mercury.
CHARLESTON
MERCURY
EXTRA: