They then named themselves the Confederate States of America. When South Carolina seceded, Maj. Anderson was afraid for the safety of his troops, so they moved to Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter is located at the entrance of the harbor, so whoever occupies it essentially has the power to control who can enter and exit. It was a bold move that outraged the Confederates. While Anderson and his troops were stationed at Fort Sumter, supplies were running dangerously low, and the tension between his force and the Confederates was at an all-time high. The Confederates demanded that he surrender the fort. Where was the source produced? Contextualize the Source What do I know about the historical context of this source?
What do I know about how the creator of this source fits into that historical context? Why did the person who created the source do so? Explore the Source What factual information is conveyed in this source? What opinions are related in this source? What is implied or conveyed unintentionally in the source? What is not said in the source? What is surprising or interesting about the source? What do I not understand about the source? Analyze the Source How does the creator of the source convey information and make his or her point?
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How does this source compare to secondary source accounts? What do I believe and disbelieve from this source? What do I still not know — and where can I find that information? Evaluate the Source What do I believe and disbelieve from this source? How does this source compare to other primary sources? Fort Sumter. Coastal defense The British attack on Washington, D. Fort Sumter on the eve of war Fort Sumter covered 2. Federal troops under seige When Federal forces occupied Fort Sumter in December of , they had enough provisions to last four months.
Fort Sumter as it appeared from across the harbor in April At p. Anderson and his men strike their colors and prepare to leave the fort.
Sadly, the only casualties at Fort Sumter come during the gun salute, when a round explodes prematurely, killing Pvt. Daniel Hough and mortally wounding another soldier. The attack is over, but the war had just begun. The fort remains in Confederate hands for the next four years until all Confederate forces evacuate Charleston on the evening of February 17, Despite having surrendered, Anderson and his men are greeted as heroes when they disembark in New York.
Beauregard is also hailed for this first Confederate victory. He is later ordered to direct the troops at Bull Run. But Union commanders were not charged with protecting slaves and promptly returned them to their masters.
One such slave—a teenager—made his way across Charleston Harbor to Fort Sumter in March of to appeal to Major Anderson, but was turned over to marshals in Charleston. With Union troops in their midst, white residents of Charleston were increasingly concerned about runaway slaves.
Of even greater worry, however, was the possibility of a slave uprising. Mary Chestnut, wife of prominent Charleston politician and Confederate colonel James Chestnut, started keeping a diary in February As events unfolded across Charleston Harbor on April 12, she wondered how the action at Fort Sumter would impact the future. Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Lawrence sits at our door, sleepy and respectful, and profoundly indifferent.
So are they all, but they carry it too far. You could not tell that they even heard the awful roar going on in the bay, though it has been dinning in their ears night and day. People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables.
They make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid? With the start of the Civil War, desperate refugees from slavery began to flood Union camps in earnest, but the government in Washington still had no consistent policy regarding fugitives. Often their fate was in the hands of the individual commanders. Jefferson C. Davis of the U. Army—no relation to the newly installed president of the Confederacy—met the arriving delegation.
Robert Anderson, who had been holed up there since just after Christmas with a tiny garrison of 87 officers and enlisted men—the last precarious symbol of federal power in passionately secessionist South Carolina. The Confederates demanded immediate evacuation of the fort. As the envoys departed and the sound of their oars faded away across the gunmetal-gray water, Anderson knew that civil war was probably only hours away.
Many in the South have viewed secession a matter of honor and the desire to protect a cherished way of life. But the war was unarguably about the survival of the United States as a nation. Many believed that if secession succeeded, it would enable other sections of the country to break from the Union for any reason.
The Revolution had proved that we could defend ourselves against outside attack. Then we proved, in the creation of the Constitution, that we could write rules for ourselves. Now the third test had come: whether a republic could defend itself against internal collapse.
Generations of historians have argued over the cause of the war. All these interpretations came together to portray the Civil War as a collision of two noble civilizations from which black slaves had been airbrushed out.
Du Bois to John Hope Franklin begged to differ with the revisionist view, but they were overwhelmed by white historians, both Southern and Northern, who, during the long era of Jim Crow, largely ignored the importance of slavery in shaping the politics of secession. Arrangements for the sesquicentennial have been left to individual states. At the time, some Southern members reacted with hostility to any emphasis on slavery, for fear that it would embolden the then-burgeoning civil rights movement.
Only later were African-American views of the war and its origins finally heard, and scholarly opinion began to shift. Most white Southerners favored racial subordination, and they wanted to protect the status quo.
They were concerned that the Lincoln administration would restrict slavery, and they were right. Many Southerners assumed that secession could be accomplished peacefully, while many Northerners thought that a little saber rattling would be sufficient to bring the rebels to their senses. Both sides, of course, were fatally wrong. Over time, the Southern states would grow increasingly determined to protect their slave-based economies. The founding fathers agreed to accommodate slavery by granting slave states additional representation in Congress, based on a formula that counted three-fifths of their enslaved population.
Optimists believed that slavery, a practice that was becoming increasingly costly, would disappear naturally, and with it electoral distortion. Instead, the invention of the cotton gin in spurred production of the crop and with it, slavery. There were nearly , enslaved Americans in A crisis had occurred in , when Southerners had threatened secession to protect slavery.
The Missouri Compromise the next year, however, calmed the waters. Under its provisions, Missouri would be admitted to the Union as a slave state, while Maine would be admitted as a free state. And, it was agreed, future territories north of a boundary line within land acquired by the Louisiana Purchase of would be free of slavery.
The South was guaranteed parity in the U. But it had already become clear to many Southern leaders that secession in defense of slavery was only a matter of time. Sectional strife accelerated through the s.
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