Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard told Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker that “if Sumter was properly garrisoned and armed, it would be a perfect Gibralter to anything but constant shelling, night and day, from the four points of the compass. As it is, the weakness of the garrison constitutes our greatest advantage, and we must, for the present, turn our attention to preventing it from being re-enforced ... but, should we have to open our batteries upon it, I hope to be able to do so with all the advantage the condition of things here will permit.” The map, taken from Harper’s Weekly, shows Fort Sumter and the Confederate batteries erected against it in 1861. Beauregard’s view of Sumter as a Gibralter was confirmed during the 1863-65 siege of Charleston.
Among the members of Beauregard’s staff who took part in the negotiations with Major Anderson prior to the bombardment of Fort Sumter were two South Carolinians—Capt. Stephen D. Lee, a 28-year-old West Point graduate and an officer in the South Carolina volunteers, and Col. James Chesnut, 46-year-old former U.S. Senator but now a member of the Confederate Congress.
Capt. Stephen D. Lee
Col. James Chesnut
Shortly after midnight, four Confederate officers confronted Anderson again. About three hours later, in a carefully worded reply, the Union commander agreed to evacuate “by noon on the 15th” unless he should receive prior to that time “controlling instructions from my Government or additional supplies.” But it was expected in Charleston that the Federal supply ships would arrive before the 15th. Anderson’s reply was rejected by the Confederate officers, who proceeded at once to Fort Johnson to give the order to open fire.
At 4:30 a.m., a mortar shell from Fort Johnson arched across the sky and burst almost directly over Fort Sumter. This was the signal for opening the bombardment. Within a few minutes, a ring of cannons and mortars about the harbor—43 in all—were firing at Sumter. Major Anderson withheld fire until about 7 o’clock. Then Capt. Abner Doubleday, Anderson’s second in command, fired a shot at the ironclad battery on Cummings Point. Ominously, the light shot “bounded off from the sloping roof ... without producing any apparent effect.” Not at any time during the battle did the guns of Fort Sumter do great damage to the Confederate defenses. Most of Fort Sumter’s heaviest guns were on the parapet and in the parade. To reduce casualties in the small garrison, Anderson ordered these left unmanned. For a while, with the help of the engineer workmen remaining at the fort, nine or ten of the casemate guns were manned. But by noon, the expenditure of ammunition was so rapid that the firing was restricted to six guns only. Meanwhile, an eyewitness later recorded,
Showers of balls from 10-inch Columbiads and 42 pounders, and shells from [10-] inch mortars poured into the fort in one incessant stream, causing great flakes of masonry to fall in all directions. When the immense mortar shells, after sailing high in the air, came down in a vertical direction, and buried themselves in the parade ground, their explosion shook the fort like an earthquake.