Sumter, FORT

Sumter, FORT (named after General Thomas Sumter, 1734–1832, an active partisan leader of the revolutionary war), an American fort associated with both the beginning and the end of the civil war, was built of brick, in the form of a truncated pentagon 38 feet high, on a shoal, partly artificial, in Charleston Harbour, $3\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$ miles from the city. On the secession of South Carolina in December 1860, Major Anderson, in command of the defences of the harbour, abandoned the other forts, and occupied Fort Sumter, mounting sixty-two guns, with a garrison of some eighty men. The attack on the fort was opened by General Beauregard on April 12, 1861, and it surrendered on the 14th: this event marked the beginning of the war. The Confederates strengthened it, and added ten guns and four mortars. In April 1863 an attack by a fleet of monitors failed. In July batteries were erected on Morris Island, about 4000 yards off, from which in a week 5000 projectiles, weighing from 100 to 300 lb., were hurled against the fort; at the end of that time it was silenced and in part demolished. Yet the garrison held on amid the ruins, and in September beat off a naval attack; and in spite of a forty days' bombardment in October–December 1863, and for still longer in July and August 1864, it was not till after the evacuation of Charleston itself, owing to the operations of General Sherman, that the garrison retired, and the United States flag was again raised, April 14, 1865; an event soon followed by the evacuation of Richmond and the Confederate surrender.