Two Union soldiers died and four others seriously wounded in the surrender.
Those casualties were caused by Confederates as surely as if they had fired the shots.
And the loss of Fort Sumter was more relatively significant than was the damage of ships at Pearl Harbor.
Finally, I’ve posted before another excellent analogy, and that is Guantanamo.
If the Cuban government demanded its surrender and launched a military assault to force that, it would be an unequivocal act of war.
Of course a Democrat President Buchanan/Obama might do nothing to stop it, but a Republican President Lincoln/Trump is made of much different metal.
I’ve never seen it claimed before that there were any Union casualties at Fort Sumter. Just the poor horse.
Evidently you are counting the two soldiers who were fatally injured in an accidental explosion when the Union troops were performing a 100 gun salute after the battle.
This is the write-up at CivilWar.org and it doesn’t mention any casualties at all:
On Thursday, April 11, 1861, Confederate Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard dispatched aides to Maj. Anderson to demand the fort’s surrender. Anderson refused. The next morning, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter and continued for 34 hours. The Civil War had begun! Anderson did not return the fire for the first two hours. The fort’s supply of ammunition was not suited for an equal fight and Anderson lacked fuses for his exploding shells—only solid shot could be used against the Rebel batteries. At about 7:00 A.M., Union Capt. Abner Doubleday, the fort’s second in command, was afforded the honor of firing the first shot in defense of the fort.
The firing continued all day, although much less rapidly since the Union fired aimed to conserve ammunition. “The crashing of the shot, the bursting of the shells, the falling of the walls, and the roar of the flames, made a pandemonium of the fort,” wrote Doubleday. The fort’s large flag staff was struck and the colors fell to the ground and a brave lieutenant, Norman J. Hall, bravely exposed himself to enemy fire as he put the Stars and Stripes back up. That evening, the firing was sporadic with but an occasional round landing on or in Fort Sumter.
Southern Forces Occupy Fort SumterOn Saturday, April 13, Anderson surrendered the fort. Incredibly, no soldiers were killed in battle. The generous terms of surrender, however, allowed Anderson to perform a 100-gun salute before he and his men evacuated the fort the next day. The salute began at 2:00 P.M. on April 14, but was cut short to 50 guns after an accidental explosion killed one of the gunners and mortally wounded another. Carrying their tattered banner, the men marched out of the fort and boarded a boat that ferried them to the Union ships outside the harbor. They were greeted as heroes on their return to the North.