April 12, 1861: The Civil War Begins

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired the opening shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. This month marks the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the war, the deadliest conflict ever fought on American soil. The Civil War lasted four years and resulted in an estimated 620,000 deaths and 1.5 million casualties. Approximately one in four soldiers that went to war never came back home. This impacted families, communities, and the entire country for generations to come.

Historical photograph of Fort Sumter The years leading up to the beginning of the Civil War were filled with increasing tensions between northern and southern states. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president by a strictly northern vote. The election was the impetus for southern states, who were already wrangling with the North on issues like slavery, states’ rights, and westward expansion, to begin the process of secession. Four days after the election, South Carolina Senator James Chesnut resigned his Senate seat and began drafting secession documents. Before long, six more states joined South Carolina to form the Confederate States of America on February 8, 1861. That number increased to 11 states after the fall of Fort Sumter. Four border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) held enslaved persons but remained loyal to the Union.

Exterior view of Fort Sumter Fort Sumter, originally built as a coastal garrison, was located at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard, from the newly formed Confederate States Army, demanded federal officials turn over the fort. He claimed the fort was located in Confederate territory and thus belonged to the South. President Lincoln refused and made attempts to send a ship to resupply the fort. The ship was turned away by Confederate guns.

Tensions grew, and Beauregard finally sent US officials an ultimatum – abandon the fort or face destruction. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12th, some 500 soldiers from the South Carolina Militia opened fire on 80 Federal soldiers inside the fort. The bombardment continued for 34 hours until the afternoon of April 13th, when the garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered the fort. Though there were no fatalities on either side during the Battle of Fort Sumter, the conflict marked the beginning of more than 10,000 military engagements that occurred between 1861-1865.

Interior View of Fort Sumter Fold3® has an extensive collection of Civil War records including:

Brady Civil War Photos: The Civil War is considered the first major conflict to be photographed extensively. Mathew Brady led a photography team that captured images of the war using a mobile studio and darkroom. Civil War Maps: This collection of 2,000 detailed battle maps provides insight into Civil War engagements. Some maps show the placement of regiments and the movement of troops. Civil War “Widows Pensions” Files: Only 20% of Civil War pension files are digitized, but if you are lucky enough to find the pension file for your ancestor, you’ll uncover a treasure trove of information. Civil War Service Records: We have service records for both Union and Confederate troops. These records are organized by state. Service Records for US Colored Troops: Approximately 179,000 Black men served in the US Army and another 19,000 in the US Navy. Despite facing racism and discrimination, the US Colored Troops served with valor and honor. These records are organized by regiment. Southern Claims Approved: After the war, the US government established the Southern Claims Commission. This office accepted petitions for compensation for items taken by Union troops during the war. In addition to these collections, Fold3 has more than 150 additional collections that contain 43 million Civil War records. Start searching our Civil War collection today on Fold3®.

eyedigress: "The war was about control of the Mississippi River but I don’t have time to teach Lot’s wife about that."

DiogenesLamp: "Very astute.
The intent of the Confederate business interests was to use the Mississippi's vast watershed to carry European products into the interior, thereby seriously undercutting the value of industries mainly controlled by the Northeastern "Robber Barons.""

What's certainly true is that US Grant's brilliant victory at Vicksburg opened the Mississippi to Union traffic from St. Louis to New Orleans.
And that was an extraordinarily important Union accomplishment.

But it's a stretch way-too-far to claim the Mississippi was the "reason" for war, or that civil war was "about control" of the Mississippi.
That's because before Fort Sumter, traffic continued on the Mississippi just as it always had.
But in those early months some clever merchants had figured out a scam where they could avoid both Confederate and Union tariffs.
Basically, they were able to convince each side they had already paid the necessary tariff when, in fact, they'd paid nothing.

But absent war neither side would let that stand for long and soon such merchants would be paying tariffs to both Confederate & Union governments.
To avoid that, merchants would re-rout shipping from the north-south Mississippi to Union west-east railroads, just as happened in the Civil War.

DiogenesLamp: "Allowing the South to secede would have wrecked many fortunes among the rich and the powerful, and these rich and powerful had the ear of Washington DC."

Here's the fact: those Northerners hurt most by secession (cotton merchants, shippers, etc.) were not helped in their trades by Civil War.
Their only hope to continue as before was for peace between North & South.
That's why in New York City there was a movement, lead by their Mayor, to secede the city and ally with Confederates.

New Yorkers were far from enthusiastic Unionists, as proved by the 1863 draft riots.

Diogeneslamp to jmacusa: "Stop your lying.
The South would have continued to have an economic system based on the use of slave labor simply by staying in the Union, and claims otherwise are just lies."

But not according to the people who actually declared their secession and wrote to tell us why:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation.
There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove."

So, yes, according to the people who did it, secession was "all about slavery".

Diogeneslamp to jmacusa: "So stop trying to pretend slavery wasn't going to continue in the Union, and stop pretending any of the fighting was because of slavery."

Sadly, DiogenesLamp is here arguing against the Southern Democrats who declared secession in 1861.
But they won't answer him, they can only say what they said, regardless of what DiogenesLamp thinks they should have said!

Diogeneslamp to jmacusa: "The Northern men were fighting because a Dictator manipulated them into war with the South and forced them to fight."

That is just Southern Democrat bull crap hyperbole.
The real truth is Northerners were ready for war in January 1861, when Confederates fired on the Union Star of the West trying to reinforce Fort Sumter.
But Democrat President Buchanan wanted to avoid war at almost any cost, and so dampened down Northern anger.
There was no need later for "manipulation" by the duly elected US President.

Civil War came at Fort Sumter because Jefferson Davis ordered it, period.

Diogeneslamp to jmacusa: "The Southern men were fighting because armies were invading them trying to force them to obey Washington DC and it's corrupt power base."

Except, in 1861 of 35 battles, 25 were fought in the North, only 10 in the Confederacy and more Confederate soldiers died invading the Union than in defending Confederate states.

It began as a war of Confederate Aggression against the United States.

HandyDandy: "Shame on you. Still spouting the same old lie about the Corwin Amendment."

DiogenesLamp: "What part is the lie?
Did Lincoln not call for it's passage during his first inaugural address? "

No he didn't.
Corwin was already passed by Congress, over opposition from a majority of Republicans, but with unanimous Democrat support, and then signed by Pres. Buchanan, not Lincoln.

What Lincoln said about Corwin, in his First Inaugural was:

"I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution which amendment, however, I have not seen –- has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service.
To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."

DiogenesLamp: "Did he not personally send notification to all the Southern governors that it had passed the congress? (Not constitutionally required.) "

Sure, he forwarded them copies, but with no express endorsement.

DiogenesLamp: "Was it not his very own Secretary of State that ramrodded it through the Senate, and assured everyone that he could get New York to ratify it?"

Senator Seward was not Secretary of State, he was a senator from New York and he did what senators naturally do -- acted independently, organized coalitions, made promises, who knows what-all they say?
And he got just enough Republicans to flip and join unanimous Democrats over the opposition of the Republican majority.

DiogenesLamp: "~~You~~ I *WANT* it not to be so, but it is so none the less."

Fixed it, and yes, that's exactly right.

“But maybe if I read Marx’s words backwards (like a John Lennon record) I can find where he’s inciting our proletariat to rise up against their ruling classes?”

Gosh. Maybe he was cleverly hiding his beliefs from his American publishers.

Sneaky guy, that Karl Marx, hiding his ideas in his Communist Manifesto published in English in London in 1848.

Maybe those expatriate ‘48er radicals who emigrated to the US and who knew Marx personally kept his past hidden when they helped found the GOP. Ya just never know. The conspiracy could have been huge.

FLT-bird: "You gotta love how some of these historical revisionist Yankees try to equate the Democrat party of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s or Jeffersonian Democrats of the mid 19th century with the modern Democrat Party.
LOL! uhhhh.....no.
Totally different.
Things have changed a lot over a century and a half."

Sure, but a lot hasn't changed and my argument is that neither Jefferson nor Jackson were 100% true Democrats, meaning they weren't 100% evil.
Both had a lot of good in them and in that sense they were more Federalist / Whig /Republican than the lunatic Democrats of today, or of 1860.

Fire Eaters were your pure Democrats then, just as BLM and Antifa are today -- the worst of the worst, the craziest of the crazy, they took control of the Democrats, then as now, and tried to destroy the United States.

Back then it cost, how many 700,000 lives? to make it right again.
How many will it cost this time, now that lunatics have again taken over the Democrats?
And how damaged will our Constitution be?

Your post started off badly and went downhill from there.
The definition of “indefinitely” is: “without any limit of time”. Please double check what dictionary you are using.......... and check out the synonyms, e.g., “endlessly” and “forever” are the top two.

You say, “So long as any state wanted to have slavery, Slavery in the United States would have continued to be legal”. Let me fix that for you: So long as any state wanted to have slavery, Slavery in that State would have continued to be legal. The whole idea being that the issue of the legality of Slavery would endlessly and forever be out of the hands of DC. (And likewise, as I like to think, out of the hands of the US Supreme Court). It would be a “States Right”. You do like those, don’t you?

DL: Why would they possibly want to preserve a Union with all those nasty slaveholders in it? What possible reason would they have to force people they hate to remain in their Union?

That is just silly talk.

DL: “Now I keep pointing out that the slaveholders were putting 200 Million dollars per year of European money into the US economy, and this was paying about 73% of all the taxes in the nation, but you people would rather believe they had some *OTHER* reason for wanting to keep the Southern states in their Union. What was that reason again?

Please read Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address in its entirety. It should relieve your troubled mind.

HD: To say it would have preserved Slavery indefinitely is a terrible judgement by you on the Southern States. Not to mention that you are contradicting yourself, as you have told us (in other threads) that Slavery was surely going to die out on its own.

DL: Both are true. "Indefinitely" means of "no defined time." (look it up.)

See above.

DL: Slavery would have gone away on it's own, and one only need look at the progress of the states since 1776 in giving it up. It was tougher to give it up in states that had more economic benefit from it, but this would wane over time and eventually they would have all given it up voluntarily. There was no reason to kill 750,000 people and establish a Washington DC supremacy over the states.

Here you are just backpedaling and attempting misdirection. Here’s a tip for you: when you are going to backpedal, lead with your ass........ and follow it. You’ll appear less wobbly.

No need to reply.

DiogenesLamp: "And what percentage of the black population was in the North?
I know Illinois and other Northern states had laws explicitly keeping blacks out.
In Illinois, it was legal to sell undocumented blacks into slavery."

In 1860 roughly half of freed-blacks lived in the North, half in the South, plus another nearly 4 million slaves.
Of all the states, North or South, the one with the fastest growing population of freed-blacks over 40 years was... yes, Illinois.
This might suggest to a reasonable person that, regardless of what laws southern-Illinois politicians passed against African Americans, citizens of northern Illinois were more willing to accept them.

DiogenesLamp: "So let's see.
Small black populations because they were driven out and terrorized by racist Northerners, and so yes, there would be less segregation because there were less opportunities for segregation."

In 1860, nearly every state, North and South, had stable or growing populations of freed-blacks.
The exceptions are telling: in the North the coldest states of Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont populations of freed-blacks fell a percent or two from 1850 to 1860.
In the South Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas had all lost double digit percentages of their freed-black populations.
The mid-west and far-west had the fastest growing populations of freed-blacks, especially Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota & Iowa.
In the far-west California's population of freed-blacks grew over 400% from 1850 to 1860.

DiogenesLamp: "The Northerners were more racist than the Southerners, but because they deliberately kept their black populations so small, there was less opportunities for them to demonstrate how racist they were."

The historical fact is that Democrats were always more racist than Republicans and there were plenty of Northern Democrats just as racist as Southerners -- hence Northern chapters of the KKK.

DiogenesLamp: "Of course the New York riots give a pretty good example of how racist they were."

New York City Democrats in 1863 rioted against the Union draft laws.
Those Democrats didn't want to fight "Lincoln's war" and they blamed freed-blacks for it!
Indeed, in 1861 New York City Democrats had wanted to secede and ally with the Confederacy -- they 100% supported slaveholders over "Black Republicans".

DiogenesLamp: "The Northern states did not give up their slavery until December of 1865, but advocates for the "War to end Slavery" don't want to look at that fact."

That's nonsense, unless you're toying with definitions of "Northern states" and "slavery".
By 1860 every state north of the Mason Dixon Line had long since legally gradually abolished slavery, and census numbers showed a mere handful in New Jersey, none elsewhere.

Four states in 1865 rejected ratification of the 13th Amendment, including Kentucky and Delaware, Union states.
Of the US 4 million slaves in 1860, the number left to be freed by the 13th Amendment in December 1865 was roughly 1%.
The rest had all been freed by other actions, i.e., Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

You suggest that some Northerners broke the law and held de-facto slaves -- well, that might even be true today, sex-slaves, etc.
But it's a far cry from the constitutionally guaranteed Confederate slavocracy over 4 million slaves, that Northerners were willing to fight & die to defeat and abolish.

By 1810, the number of slaves in New Jersey had decreased. By 1820, there were 7,557 and in 1860 just 18 'apprentices for life' or slaves waiting to be freed by the 13th Amendment.

https://knowingnewark.npl.org/slavery-in-new-jersey-a-shame-that-spanned-three-centuries/

In 1830, of the 3,568 Northern blacks who remained slaves, more than two-thirds were in New Jersey. The institution was rapidly declining in the 1830s, but not until 1846 was slavery permanently abolished. At the start of the Civil War, New Jersey citizens owned 18 "apprentices for life" (the federal census listed them as "slaves") -- legal slaves by any name.

http://slavenorth.com/newjersey.htm

The others had died, escaped, or been freed.

The trouble with avoiding war is that the enemy gets a vote too, and Lincoln voted that he would have a war.

If you want to avoid war, don't think of your fellow countrymen as the enemy and recognize that they have a vote and a say in what happens to the country too.

Lincoln's "vote" wasn't for war. It was for the continuation of the union. But I'm talking about the weeks, months, years, and decades before Fort Sumter. There was a major strategic failure by Southern elites. They had been dominant in the early Republic, but they were too attached to slavery and the money it brought in to think clearly about their future and the nation's.

DiogenesLamp: "Now I keep pointing out that the slaveholders were putting 200 Million dollars per year of European money into the US economy, and this was paying about 73% of all the taxes in the nation..."

Well... at least the $200 million part is correct, for cotton exports, but the rest is nonsense, and that's because:

Sure, in 1860 $200 million was a lot of money, but it was under 5% of total US GDP, around $4.4 billion, and only 1% of total US asset values, around $20 billion.
The claim that $200 million in exports "paid for" 73% of US tariffs on imports, is nonsense, since at best that $200 million was only 50% of total exports and therefore could at most "pay for" only 50% of US imports tariffs.
But that $200 million in Deep South cotton exports actually paid for 0% of US imports directly, since Southerners spent that entire $200 million on manufactured "imports" from the North.
Northerners then spent that $200 million, in earnings, on raw material imports to make products for the South and at the same time, to pay US import tariffs, nearly 100%.

So naturally DiogenesLamp leaves out that important step, of Southern "imports" from the North to make it sound like Northerners got a "free ride" at Southern expense.

That's not what happened.

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