[PistolPaknMama]

Sumter was the property of the United States and South Carolina had no legal claim to it.

According to who? The government of the united States? The mother of all imminent domain issues which you obviously fully support.

[Non-Sequitur]

According to who? The government of the united States? The mother of all imminent domain issues which you obviously fully support.

According to the legislature of South Carolina, which deeded the property Sumter sits on free and clear to the United States government. According to the Constitution of the United States which says that only Congress can dispose of federal property.

OK?

[PeaRidge]

non-sequitur knows for a fact that the underwater shoal on which Ft. Sumter was built, was ceded, not deeded, to the Federal government. To cede means to turn over control, not ownership.

If the site had been purchased, then the Constitution authorized Congress "To exercise exclusive Legislation...[and] Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings".

It did not authorize Congress to exercise similar authority over forts that are ceded or lent to the federal government.

The founding fathers recognized this key distinction and, accordingly, passed a 1794 enabling act that would allow the states to conditionally cede forts for the purpose of garrisoning them with federal troops. South Carolina did this in 1805 with three existing forts in Charleston. In 1827 they used the same process, and not the federal purchasing process, to cede the land for Fort Sumter.

The Union had been given control of the site by the state of South Carolina for “purposes of navigation and protection of the city and the harbor”.

When Union troops occupied the fort and trained their weapons on Charleston, their presence was no longer for navigation and protection of the city.

South Carolina had every right to attempt to buy out any interest of the people of the Union.