Fort Sumter, Capture of
Fort Sumter, Capture of (1861).After the Republican Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860, seven states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The new president vowed in his inaugural address to “hold, occupy, and possess” federal property in the South, but by then the United States controlled only two major posts within the Confederacy: Fort Pickens, on Pensacola Bay, Florida; and Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Brig. Gen. Braxton Bragg appeared unenthusiastic about his chances of capturing Fort Pickens, and so attention centered on Fort Sumter.
On 10 April 1861, Confederate secretary of war Leroy Pope Walker ordered Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard to demand the evacuation of the Charleston post and, if refused, to reduce it. Maj. Robert Anderson held Fort Sumter with a modest garrison and...
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