Fort Sumter, in Charleston (SC) harbor, was one of several coastal fortifications begun in 1829. It was still unfinished and unmanned in December, 1860, when South Carolina delegates voted to secede from the Federal Union. On December 26, it was manned by the Federal army with a "force" of 85 men, who moved there from one of three other Federal fortifications around Charleston harbor -- the only one that had been manned at all.
By March 2,1861, seven states had seceded, and the other three former Federal installations had been taken over by the newly proclaimed Confederate States of America. When South Carolina demanded that the Federals leave Fort Sumter on April 11 and were rebuffed, the stage was set for what would become the American Civil War.
At four-ten on the morning of April 12, a signal shell was fired from one of the former Federal forts -- the "shot heard 'round the world". For the next 34 hours, the fort was pounded from three sides by superior numbers of weapons manned by superior numbers of troops. A truce was called at 2pm on the 13th, and the fort surrendered that evening. The morning of the 14th, the Federal commander and his 85 men boarded a ship for New York. Incredibly, no one on either side was killed.
For the next two years, Charleston harbor became the focal point for war goods flowing in to the Confederates, and cotton flowing out to pay for those goods. In April 1863, the Union army re-took one of the forts at the southern lip of the harbor, installed rifled cannons, and in July, began shelling Fort Sumter. The fort's fifty-foot high and five-foot thick walls, which could repel round shot with minimal damage, were pulverized by the rifled shots. By the end of the year, the fort could respond with only "harmless musketry". Intermittent fire continued for the next year -- the Union army fired a total of seven million pounds of metal at the fort. With Union general Sherman's army advancing on the city, the fort was abandoned by the Confederates on February 17. 1865, and on April 14, 1865, exactly four years after the Union army marched out of Fort Sumter, it was re-occupied by the Union, and the same flag taken down four years earlier was run up the flagpole.
Today, the fort is only a shell of its former self (pun intended). The multi-tiered fifty-foot walls are gone -- reduced to rubble by the Union shelling. Any remaining structures inside the walls were removed in 1899 and two huge concrete "disappearing rifle" emplacements were built there. (Similar to those at Fort Warden in Port Townsend, for you Washington folks.) Both of those were removed during WWII, and anti-aircraft guns installed. (Those are gone, too.) A lighthouse was put there in 1865, moved to facilitate the 1899 construction, and demolished in 1948, the same year the fort was transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service. A museum is located in the space formerly occupied by one of the disappearing rifles. A NPS tour boat hauls tourists to the fort (for a few bucks) where one can where the walls, guns, soldier's quarters, and lighthouse USED to be.
