Charleston in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  Charleston, South Carolina, began the American Civil War. On the 9th of January, 1861, students from The Citadel opened cannon fire on a merchant ship attempting to enter the harbor. That ship was carrying food to U.S. Army soldiers stranded at Fort Sumter. It was a cadet, not a soldier, who fired the opening shot of America's deadliest conflict. Three months later, Confederate artillery transformed that confrontation into a nationwide war. Charleston would spend four grueling years resisting the Union's most sustained siege effort. What had made this city the first to act? How long could it withstand the combined force of the U.S. Army and Navy? And who would finally walk through its gates?

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• 2. Slavery and Secession

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  The 1860 Census placed Charleston 22nd among all U.S. cities, with a population of 40,522. Half of South Carolina's population were enslaved Black people, and white southerners' fear of revolt shaped every political calculation the state made. Beginning with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, proslavery ideology drove South Carolina's sectionalism more than tariffs or states' rights ever did.

  Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860 forced the decision. South Carolina convened a special convention to consider withdrawing from the United States, focused on Lincoln's opposition to expanding slavery into new territories. On the 20th of December, 1860, the convention voted for secession, making South Carolina the first state to do so. The declaration charged that Northern states had "denounced as sinful the institution of slavery" and had actively assisted enslaved people in escaping.

  Within days, South Carolina militia seized Castle Pinckney and the Charleston Arsenal, claiming their stores of weapons and ammunition. Jefferson Davis was building the Confederate government but had yet to act against U.S. soldiers still holding the harbor's most imposing fort.

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• 3. The Bombardment Begins

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  P.G.T. Beauregard, appointed to command the siege of Fort Sumter, had once learned artillery from the very man now defending it. U.S. Major Robert Anderson had been Beauregard's instructor at the United States Military Academy. Davis ordered Beauregard to capture the fort before a Union supply ship could arrive with food. After consulting his cabinet on the 9th of April, Davis issued the order.

  At 3:20 in the morning on the 12th of April, 1861, a Confederate officer named Robert Chestnut delivered a written ultimatum to Anderson inside the fort. The batteries would open fire within one hour. The bombardment lasted 34 hours. Anderson surrendered.

  In the years that followed, Citadel cadets continued supporting the Confederate war effort. They drilled new recruits, manufactured ammunition, protected arms depots, and guarded Union prisoners of war. Less than eight months after Anderson's surrender, the city faced a catastrophe that no artillery shell had caused.

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• 4. Fire and Blockade

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  On the 11th of December, 1861, a massive fire burned through 164 acres of Charleston. It destroyed the Cathedral of Saint John and Saint Finbar, the Circular Congregational Church, the South Carolina Institute hall, and nearly 600 other buildings. Most of the damage remained unrepaired through the end of the war.

  A formerly enslaved man named Amos Gadsden later recalled that a balloon had started the blaze. Union and Confederate troops were camped on opposite banks of a nearby river at the time. Many in the North read the fire as divine judgment for secession.

  The U.S. Navy maintained a blockade around Confederate-controlled port cities, but Charleston became a key haven for Confederate blockade runners. U.S. forces tried to obstruct the harbor entrance by deliberately sinking a Stone Fleet of old ships. Runners still found their way through.

  In June 1862, U.S. Brigadier General Henry Washington Benham led the only land-based attempt to retake Charleston during the entire war. His troops attacked at Secessionville, on what is now James Island. Confederate defenders turned them back. Benham's attack failed, and the city held. The following year would bring the largest Union naval and land offensive the harbor had yet seen.

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• 5. Years of Bombardment

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  U.S. Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont launched the major naval offensive of 1863, beginning with the First Battle of Charleston Harbor. The bombardment accomplished little, and Du Pont's land forces were never put ashore.

  Attention shifted to Battery Wagner on Morris Island, which guarded the harbor's southwestern entrance. The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Union's African-American regiments, fought in both the First and Second Battle of Fort Wagner. Confederate forces inflicted heavy casualties each time. Confederate defenders eventually abandoned Battery Wagner following the Second Battle of Charleston Harbor in September 1863. A U.S. naval raiding party then attempted to recapture Fort Sumter itself and failed badly. With Union forces now holding Morris Island, shore batteries gradually reduced Fort Sumter to rubble.

  Jefferson Davis visited Charleston in November 1863 and spoke without ambiguity. He declared it better for the city to be reduced to "a heap of ruins" than to be surrendered. The bombardment that began in late 1863 continued on and off for 587 days.

  On the 17th of February, 1864, the H.L. Hunley made a night attack on the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor, the first successful submarine attack in history. The Hunley survived the engagement but foundered and sank on the return to shore.

  Coordinated U.S. attacks in early July 1864 included an amphibious landing at Fort Johnson and an invasion of Johns Island. Both failed, but they wore down the defenders further. As General William Tecumseh Sherman's army advanced through South Carolina, the Confederate position in Charleston grew increasingly desperate.

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• 6. Liberation

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  On the 15th of February, 1865, Beauregard ordered the remaining Confederate forces to evacuate Charleston. The U.S. Army captured the city only a month and a half before the war ended.

  On the 18th of February, the city's mayor surrendered to U.S. Army General Alexander Schimmelfennig. The first soldiers to enter were members of the 21st Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops and the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, another African-American regiment. They marched into the city singing "John Brown's Body." U.S. soldiers remained in Charleston during the city's reconstruction.

  The retaking of Charleston was cause for celebration across the United States.

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• 7. The Flag Returns

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  The flag lowered at Fort Sumter's surrender in 1861 had been preserved in a specially-made case for four years. It had been carried to public events across the country, displayed to help raise funds for the Union war effort. The same officer who had lowered it was sent back to raise it again.

  Chartered boats brought hundreds of spectators to Charleston from as far away as New York. Black attendees made the journey on a separate boat, with a Black captain.

  Henry Ward Beecher, America's most famous clergyman at the time and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, delivered the keynote address. William Lloyd Garrison also attended. The episode has been largely forgotten. The reason is the date: the ceremony took place on the 14th of April, 1865, and that night President Lincoln was assassinated. One observer wrote of what had befallen the city: "I doubt any city was ever more terribly punished than Charleston, but as her people had for years been agitating for war and discord, and had finally inaugurated the Civil War, the judgment of the world will be that Charleston deserved the fate that befell her."

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