Fort Sumter and 'the circle of fire'

The stone jetties fixing the entrance to Charleston Harbor were not built until long after the Civil War. Prior to their construction, storms and ever migrating offshore sands caused frequent relocation of the main ship channel.

In early colonial days, the deep-water approach to Charleston passed hard by the northeastern end of James Island. Fort Johnson, the harbor's oldest fortification, was built there to guard the city from attack by sea. By the time of the American Revolution, the channel had shifted well to the north, paralleling and then rounding Sullivan's Island.

A palmetto log fort called Fort Sullivan's repelled a British fleet commanded by Sir Peter Parker in one of the Revolution's most significant (and most forgotten) battles. Erosion subsequently washed the old fort into the sea and a new one, Fort Moultrie, was then built on higher ground, well inland of the original site.

In 1829, the federal government decided to build a fort on a submerged sandbar, roughly midway between Forts Johnson and Moultrie, in the mouth of the harbor. This new fort would be called Sumter, and it was designed to withstand bombardment by the heaviest guns then in existence.

There being little threat of invasion by sea in this period of U.S. westward expansion, construction proceeded at a very slow pace, even by federal standards. Ten years passed before the rock foundations of the new fort were raised above the mean high water mark. Appropriations to continue the work came by fits and starts. Politics, rather than military necessity, seemed to be the driving force behind the project.

By 1860, however, Fort Sumter was nearing completion. Its imposing brick walls were then 40 feet high, and from five to 10 feet thick. The fort's longest wall, called the gorge, faced a marshy area to the south, between James and Morris islands. This wall was 350 feet long, and behind it were powder magazines and wooden barracks. The fort's other four walls were each 200 feet in length, and with the gorge they formed a pentagon, its sharpest point aimed at Sullivan's Island, 1,500 yards to the north.

The deep water channel into Charleston by this time had shifted again. The approach now was through sandbars some six miles southeast of the harbor entrance, thence along the eastern shore of Morris Island, and around and within 1,000 yards of the island's northern tip, called Cumming's Point. The channel then ran between Forts Moultrie and Sumter, before bending southwest to parallel the northern shore of James Island. The shallower Sullivan's Island channel was still navigable in this period by small vessels, but seldom used.

In the run-up to the momentous events of April 12, 1861, the sesquicentennial of which we observe today, Maj. Robert Anderson, commander of a small Union Army garrison at Fort Moultrie (10 officers and 65 men), relocated his command to the more defensible but still woefully ill-prepared Fort Sumter. Most of Sumter's guns were on site, but few were mounted and ready to fire.

What's more, his ammunition and provisions were sparse. There was little hope that reinforcements could pierce "the circle of fire" Confederate forces had emplaced around him.

Negotiations seeking a peaceful surrender of Fort Sumter proved fruitless. Each side seemed loath to fire the first shot. Firebrands like the Charleston Mercury's Barnwell Rhett urged the Confederates to get on with it. Others were more cautious. Robert Toombs, then serving as Confederate secretary of state, warned President Jefferson Davis that firing on Fort Sumter "will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen. ... It is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will storm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."

At 3:20 in the morning on April 12, Major Anderson was formally notified that the bombardment of Fort Sumter would begin in one hour. At 4:30 two signal guns were fired from Fort Johnson, and moments later a mortar round exploded squarely over Fort Sumter. Other batteries, on Morris and Sullivan's islands, in Fort Moultrie, everywhere in Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard's circle of fire, quickly followed suit.

Those who watched and cheered this initial bombardment little dreamed that they were witness to the opening scene of a great tragedy, a tragedy that would take the lives of more Americans, North and South, than all our other wars (including our present ones) combined.

An estimated 4,000 rounds were fired in the April 12-13 engagement. Incredibly, there was no loss of life on either side, though Sumter itself suffered heavy damage. Barracks and quarters were reduced to smoking ruins, gates were smashed open, large chunks of masonry gouged from the walls. This was but a small prelude, however, to what came later in the war when the fort, in Confederate hands, was pounded into rubble by Union guns.

On the afternoon of April 13, Maj. Anderson raised a white flag of surrender over Fort Sumter. Celebrants filled the streets of Charleston. Many thought the war had been won.

Charleston's Washington Light Infantry played no part in the opening bombardment of the great fort sited in the harbor's mouth. Its assignment on that fatal day was to repel a threatened landing of Union troops on Sullivan's Island, a landing that never happened. It took its denial of early glory in good grace, however, and sent the following letter to those who did participate:

"Whereas, on the 13th day of April 1861, was won a victory for the Palmetto State, which was wonderful in its accomplishment and promises much in its effects, and inasmuch as that work was in great measure furthered by the cooperation of two of our Brother Volunteer Companies:

"Resolved: That we as Soldiers, do hereby express our admiration for the patriotism that prompted them previous to, and the courage and intrepidity which served them during the engagement, and as fellow Soldiers we enjoy the opportunity and privilege of extending them our congratulations. ..."

And so, Fort Sumter had fallen, and with it the last chance to avoid a great civil war that would take the lives of 600,000 young men, 114 of whom would be members of the Washington Light Infantry.

Many a bloody battle lay ahead, and never again would the WLI have cause to regret its absence from the near flashing of the guns.

The war destroyed a way of life in the South and impoverished generations that were yet to be born. At its conclusion, the proud and beautiful city of Charleston lay in ruins, and grass grew in its streets.

R.L. Schreadley is a former Post and Courier executive editor. He is the author of "Valor and Virtue, the Washington Light Infantry in Peace and in War," from which the foregoing is adapted.