Located on a man-made island at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter was the site of the first shots of the Civil War. Attention was first drawn to this federal outpost immediately following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860. Fort Sumter was owned by the federal government but was not yet occupied by U. S. troops due to its construction having just been completed. South Carolinians, who had recently seceded from the Union, found the garrison to be a threat to their security and a challenge to their sovereignty. The Charleston Mercury explained to its readers that other Southern states would never take the cause seriously until “we have proven that a garrison of seventy men cannot hold the portal of our commerce.”
South Carolina’s governor, Francis Pickens, claimed he had an unwritten agreement with President James Buchanan. The agreement was that U. S. major Robert Anderson (who commanded the federal forces in Charleston Harbor) and his men would remain at Fort Moultrie, another fort in the Charleston Harbor. Anderson, however, viewed Fort Moultrie as indefensible from land and therefore considered moving his men to the more secure location provided by Fort Sumter. Immediately after Anderson received authorization to do just that from the Buchanan administration, he moved his small force onto boats and occupied Fort Sumter on the night of December 26, 1860.
When the news broke, Governor Pickens immediately sent his military aide, Col. J. Johnston Pettigrew, to meet with Anderson and to request that he and his men return to Fort Moultrie. Anderson refused his request, and in response Pickens assembled battery units on Morris Island. Anderson sent word to the Buchanan administration that his men needed reinforcements and supplies if they were to hold Fort Sumter. Buchanan decided to send an unarmed merchant ship, the Star of the West, loaded with 200 civilian-dressed recruits, thus reinforcing the fort without overtly threatening South Carolina authorities. However, despite the efforts to remain secret, news about the ship’s mission and destination quickly spread after its departure from New York City on January 5, 1861. As a result, when the ship neared the Charleston Harbor on January 9, it was unable to make it past the guns at Fort Moultrie, and it was forced to turn back and leave Anderson and his men without their reinforcements and supplies. Following the Star of the West incident, Pickens added to the ring of battery units that surrounded Fort Sumter. On January 11, Pickens sent a note to Anderson requesting the surrender of the fort. Once again, Anderson refused, and the opposing forces remained stalemated for two months.
On March 1, 1861, three days before Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office, Confederate president Jefferson Davis assigned Confederate brigadier general Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard command of the military situation in Charleston. Immediately, Beauregard strengthened the defenses of both the harbor entrance and the battery units facing Fort Sumter. Shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration, Anderson reported to the president that the garrison was very low on supplies and would need reinforcements as well as naval support to successfully hold the fort. Meanwhile, the Lincoln administration could not come to an agreement about the current situation at Fort Sumter. William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, and Gen. Winfield Scott, commanding general of the U. S. Army agreed that Anderson and his men should evacu-ate the island, but Lincoln felt he needed to learn more about the situation before making a decision. As a result, the Lincoln administration sent a number of unofficial delegates to determine the situation of the fort and its occupants.
Despite the pleas of many of his advisors, President Lincoln decided to send relief to Fort Sumter. On April 6,
Interior view of Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861, after its evacuation (National Archives)
Lincoln sent word to Governor Pickens that reinforcements were being sent to Fort Sumter. The administration felt that this warning left it up to the Confederate authorities as to whether or not a war would take place, therefore supporting their defensive strategy concerning the outbreak of the war. On April 10, the USS Powhatan left for Fort Sumter.
Following Lincoln’s message to Pickens, the Confederate secretary of war, Leroy Pope Walker, instructed Beauregard to demand that Anderson surrender the fort and to conquer the fort if Anderson refused the request for surrender. Upon receiving these instructions, Beauregard began positioning his men and equipment to prepare adequately for an artillery assault on Fort Sumter as well as to prevent any reinforcements from successfully landing and resupplying the fort.
On the afternoon of April 11, 1861, a Confederate delegation was sent by Beauregard to Fort Sumter to demand the immediate surrender of the fort. After a unanimous vote by the federal officers, Anderson once again refused to evacuate. The rebels advised Anderson that firing would begin early the next morning. At 4:30 A. M. on April 12, 1861, a signal gun was fired, alerting all the batteries to begin firing—the Civil War had begun.
Despite a hard first day’s fight for Anderson and his men, the end seemed in sight when the garrison spotted three U. S. ships off the harbor. However, unbeknownst to them at the time, the reinforcement ships would never be able to make it past the harbor entrance batteries and, therefore, would not be able to assist Anderson. As a result, after deliberating with Beauregard’s delegates, Anderson set the time for the surrender for the following day, April 14, 1861.
The first shots had been fired in the Civil War. Though the opening volleys were not deadly, they opened the door to a conflict that cost both North and South dearly in both lives and money. On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to help restore the Union, and Jefferson Davis responded in kind. Preparations began in earnest for America’s Civil War.
Further reading: Richard N. Current, Lincoln and the First Shot (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963); William A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter (New York: Scribner’s, 1957).
—Megan Quinn
Foster, Stephen C. (1826-1864) songwriter Songwriter and composer Stephen Collins Foster wrote Music that represented the heartfelt sentiments and folksy way of life of most 19th-century Americans. Enduring classics such as “Oh! Susannah” (“I come from Alabama, with my banjo on my knee”) and “Camptown Races” remain beloved tunes to the present day. Among other distinctions, Foster was the first “professional” songwriter in the United States. From 1850 to his death, he lived only off the income he earned from the sale of his music. A contemporary critic summed up Foster’s impact in this way: “The air is full of his melodies. They are our national music.”
Foster was born on July 4, 1826, in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, the 10th of 11 children. His father was a politician and merchant who fell on hard times but managed to maintain his family’s middle-class existence. Foster’s parents encouraged their children’s love of music with piano lessons and recitals. Stephen received a good EDUCATION and was tutored in music by a teacher in Pittsburgh.
Foster’s parents expected their talented son to take a job in the business world, which he did, at first. Hired as a bookkeeper, Foster felt out of place in an office. He quit and dedicated himself to music. Foster’s first published song, “Open Thy Lattice Love,” was in print by the time he was 20. In 1850 he had 12 compositions in print and felt secure enough to marry his sweetheart, Jane MacDowell, with whom he had a daughter, Marion. His income was based on 10 percent royalties of his sheet-music sales. Foster’s compositions were not protected by copyright. Thus, while arrangers and publishers made thousands of dollars from his music, his own income remained limited, and he and his family struggled at near-poverty levels for much of the time.
Possessed of a sensitive ear for the cadence of language and style, Foster began his career in Pittsburgh, where he lived for most of his short but productive life. Writing tender, lyrical ballads for parlor singers and pianists, such as “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” Foster studied the various musical and poetic styles of immigrant populations. The first songwriter to weave African-American, German, Irish, Italian, Scottish, and English music into one style, Foster created a distinctly American type of song.
Soon, Foster’s music was wildly popular among the growing middle-class families who had a piano in their newly added parlor. But his influence was also widely felt in the musical THEATER, as well, and reached out to large immigrant and working-class audiences. Many of his most well-known songs were composed for minstrel shows, where white actors posed as African Americans in black face. Foster’s songs for minstrel shows were written in dialect. This genre of songs exposed white audiences to the slaves’ point of view, to their cruel treatment, and to the fact that African Americans were capable of the same feelings as white people. “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night” is deeply evocative of the pain slaves endured. Another famous example is “Way Down upon the Swanee River.”
Foster was the first songwriter to refer to an African-American woman as a “lady” in “Nellie Was a Lady” (1849). Although the dialect he created for minstrel shows was vulgar, Foster attempted to provide a more human view of African Americans to counteract the racism of the time. With this approach, Foster also made minstrel music more acceptable to the middle class and to female audiences.
When the approach of the Civil War found Foster bankrupt, he combined forces with George Cooper to produce two Civil War songs, “Willie Has Gone to War” and “For the Dear Old Flag I Die.” However, by the age of 37, Foster was separated from his family, in ill health, penniless, and living alone in New York City. Weakened by fever, he fell and cut himself on his washbasin, which led to his death on January 13, 1864.
Further reading: Ken Emerson, Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997); John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour (New York: Crowell, 1953).
—Gina Ladinsky
World History
