Between Two Rivers · Episode 6
First Shots
April 12, 1861: the first shots of the Civil War are fired over Charleston harbor at Fort Sumter. Secession, Major Anderson's move to Sumter, thirty-four hours of bombardment, the fire of 1861, blockade runners, the Swamp Angel, the Hunley, and the flag raised again in April 1865.
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Carol April 12th, 1861. Four thirty in the morning. It's still dark over Charleston harbor.
Shannon And out on James Island, a mortar fires a single shell. It arcs up over the water and bursts above Fort Sumter.
Carol A signal. And then every gun around the harbor opens up.
Shannon People in town climbed onto their rooftops and walked down to the Battery to watch. Like it was a show.
Carol It was the start of the Civil War.
Shannon Welcome back to Between Two Rivers. A history of Charleston, one era at a time.
Carol Last time, Charleston filled up with steeples and earned a nickname. This time, the city that started the war spends four years under fire.
Shannon Episode six. First Shots.
Carol So how did it start here, of all places?
Shannon Charleston had been the center of the secession movement for years. In the spring of 1860, the Democratic Party held its national convention here, and it split apart. Then in November, Abraham Lincoln was elected president.
Carol And South Carolina didn't wait.
Shannon Not for a minute. A convention met in December, first in Columbia, and then moved down to Charleston. On December 20th, 1860, it voted to leave the Union. Unanimously.
Carol The first state to go.
Shannon The first. And it said plainly that it was leaving the Union to protect slavery. Within minutes, the Charleston Mercury put out a special edition with a headline in giant letters.
Carol The Union is dissolved.
Shannon That was it. That night they signed the ordinance in a big public hall on Meeting Street. People rang bells and fired cannons in the streets.
Carol But there was a problem. The United States Army was still in Charleston harbor.
Shannon A small garrison, under a major named Robert Anderson. They were at Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island. A newer brick fort, on the same stretch of beach as our palmetto fort from episode four.
Carol And that fort was hard to defend from the land side.
Shannon Very. So the day after Christmas, at night, Anderson quietly moved his men across the water to Fort Sumter. A brick fort, sitting on its own island, right in the mouth of the harbor.
Carol And Charleston took that as an insult.
Shannon They did. For the next three and a half months, it was a standoff. In January, a ship sent to bring supplies, the Star of the West, was fired on and turned back. Cadets from the Citadel helped man those guns.
Carol And by April, Anderson was running out of food.
Shannon So the new Confederate government decided to take the fort before it could be resupplied. The general in charge in Charleston was P.G.T. Beauregard. And here's the twist.
Carol He knew Anderson.
Shannon Anderson had been his artillery instructor at West Point.
Carol So, back to that morning. April 12th.
Shannon The bombardment went on for about thirty-four hours. Thousands of shells. Fires broke out inside the fort. Anderson's men fired back, but they were outgunned and outnumbered.
Carol And on the 13th, he surrendered.
Shannon And here's the strange part. In all that shooting, nobody on either side was killed.
Carol Nobody?
Shannon Not in the battle. The only deaths came the next day, during the surrender ceremony. Anderson was allowed to fire a salute to his flag, and one of the guns went off too early. A private named Daniel Hough was killed. Another man died of his wounds later.
Carol So the first death of the war was an accident.
Shannon An accident, during a salute. And then Anderson and his men sailed north, carrying the flag that had flown over the fort.
Carol And then Charleston got hit by something nobody saw coming.
Shannon Another fire. December 1861. It started near the Cooper River and the wind carried it all the way across the peninsula to the Ashley.
Carol How bad?
Shannon It burned a wide path straight through the city. Hundreds of buildings. Including the hall where secession was signed, and the Catholic cathedral.
Carol And with the war on, there was no money to rebuild.
Shannon None. Much of that burned district was still in ruins at the end of the war.
Carol So what did the war look like from the city itself?
Shannon For a while, it was the blockade. The Union navy parked ships outside the harbor to keep anything from getting in or out.
Carol Like Blackbeard.
Shannon (laughs) Like Blackbeard, on a much bigger scale. But fast, low steamers called blockade runners kept slipping through at night. Running to Nassau and Bermuda with cotton, and coming back with guns, medicine, and luxuries.
Carol Did it work?
Shannon Surprisingly often. Charleston was one of the busiest blockade-running ports in the South.
Carol And then the Union tried to take the city back.
Shannon They tried with ironclads first, in April 1863, and the harbor forts drove them off. Then they tried by land, on Morris Island, at a fort called Battery Wagner.
Carol That's the one from the movie Glory.
Shannon That's the one. In July 1863, the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first Black regiments in the Union army, led the assault. It failed, and the losses were terrible. But that regiment became famous for its courage.
Carol And after that?
Shannon The Union settled in and started shelling the city. They put a huge cannon in the marsh, and the soldiers named it the Swamp Angel. It could reach downtown Charleston, miles away. It burst after a few dozen shots, but other guns took its place.
Carol For how long?
Shannon The shelling went on, off and on, for about a year and a half. People moved uptown, out of range. And Fort Sumter was pounded into a pile of brick and rubble. But the Confederates held it to the end.
Carol Now, one of the strangest stories of the whole war happened here.
Shannon The Hunley.
Carol A submarine. In 1864.
Shannon A hand-cranked submarine. Built in Mobile, Alabama, and shipped to Charleston by train. It was long and narrow, made of iron. A crew of eight squeezed inside. Seven of them turned a crank to drive the propeller, and the captain steered.
Carol It sounds terrifying.
Shannon It was. It sank twice during training, and killed most of its crew both times. The second time, the man it was named after, Horace Hunley, was on board.
Carol And they kept going.
Shannon They raised it again, and found a new crew. On the night of February 17th, 1864, the Hunley went out past the harbor and rammed an explosive charge into a Union warship, the Housatonic.
Carol And it sank.
Shannon In a few minutes. The Hunley became the first submarine ever to sink an enemy warship.
Carol But it never came home.
Shannon It never came home. Nobody knew what happened to it for more than a hundred years. It was finally found in 1995, and raised in the year 2000. It's in a lab in North Charleston now, and you can go see it.
Carol So how did it end?
Shannon Quietly. In February 1865, General Sherman's army was marching north through South Carolina, and the Confederates realized Charleston would be cut off. So they left. They blew up what they couldn't carry, and pulled out.
Carol And the Union army walked in.
Shannon The next day. After all those years of trying, they just walked in.
Carol And Fort Sumter?
Shannon That's the end of the story. On April 14th, 1865, exactly four years after he lowered it, Robert Anderson came back to Fort Sumter and raised the same flag over the ruins.
Carol And that night?
Shannon That night, in Washington, Abraham Lincoln was shot.
Carol So, if you're in Charleston today, where do you go for this episode?
Shannon Take the boat out to Fort Sumter. It leaves from Liberty Square downtown, and from Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant. The fort is much lower than it was in 1861, because so much of it was shot away.
Carol Then go to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston to see the Hunley. It's open for tours on weekends.
Shannon And stand on the Battery, at the tip of the peninsula, and look out at Fort Sumter in the distance. That's where people stood on April 12th, 1861, watching the war begin.
Carol That's Charleston in the Civil War. A city that cheered the first shots, and then spent four years under fire.
Shannon And came out of it in ruins.
Carol Next time, Charleston picks itself up. Phosphate mines, new railroads, and then, in 1885, a hurricane.
Shannon Hard Times. That's next time, on Between Two Rivers.