Fort Sumter. Confederate forces shelled Fort Sumter for three and a half days before Northern commander Major Robert Anderson surrendered. This image depicts Fort Sumter as it appeared in 1861. It all began at Fort Sumter. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Five days later, 68 federal troops stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, withdrew to Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston Harbor. The North considered the fort to be the property of the United States government. The people of South Carolina believed it belonged to the new Confederacy. The commander at Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson, was a former slave owner who was nevertheless unquestionably loyal to the Union. Fort Sumter lies in the center of Charleston Harbor.
In February 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America, in Montgomery, Alabama. As weeks passed, pressure grew for Lincoln to take some action on Fort Sumter and to reunite the states. Digital History. American Civil War. The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I.
It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. [N 2] One estimate of the death toll is that ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40 died. From 1861 to 1865 about 620,000 soldiers lost their lives.[12] Causes of secession Slavery To settle the dispute over slavery expansion, Abolitionists and proslavery elements sent their partisans into Kansas, both using ballots and bullets. States' rights Main article: States' rights Sectionalism and cotton trade Status of the states, 1861.
Territories Protectionism Ft. Digital History. Printable Version In April 1860, the Democratic Party assembled in Charleston, South Carolina to select a presidential nominee. Southern delegates insisted that the party endorse a federal code to guarantee the rights of slaveholders in the territories. When the convention rejected the proposal, delegates from the deep South walked out. The remaining delegates reassembled six weeks later in Baltimore and selected Stephen Douglas as their candidate.
Southern Democrats proceeded to choose John C. Breckinridge as their presidential nominee. In May, the Constitutional Union Party, which consisted of conservative former Whigs, Know Nothings, and pro-Union Democrats nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President. The 1860 election revealed how divided the country had become. In the final balloting, Lincoln won only 39.9 percent of the popular vote, but received 180 Electoral College votes, 57 more than the combined total of his opponents. Copyright 2014 Digital History.
Digital History. Printable Version At noon on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Major General Robert Anderson raised the U.S. flag over Fort Sumter. It was the same flag that he had surrendered four years before. That evening, a few minutes after 10 o'clock, John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), a young actor and Confederate sympathizer (who had spied for Richmond and been part of a plot to kidnap Lincoln), entered the presidential box at Ford's Theater in Washington and shot the President in the back of the head. Booth then leaped to the stage, but he caught a spur in a flag draped in front of the box. He fell and broke his leg. As he fled the theater he is said to have cried out: "Sic semper tyrannis"—thus always to tyrants, the motto of the State of Virginia.
Simultaneously, a Booth accomplice, Lewis Paine, brutally attacked Secretary of State William Seward (1801-1872) at his home with a knife. Lincoln was carried unconscious to a neighboring house. Following the shooting, Booth fled to Maryland on horseback. The Civil War Years. « Return to History Index by Carl G. Karsch The spring of 1865 — nearly a century and a half ago — was one the nation and Philadelphia, its second largest city, would not soon forget. "Richmond is ours... " were the joyous words that crackled over newspaper telegraphs. Exuberance vanished with Lincoln's assassination on April 14 and his death the next day, which also happened to be Good Friday.
On Saturday afternoon, April 22, Lincoln's funeral train arrived at Broad St. & Washington Ave., the same railroad terminal in South Philadelphia from which troops by the thousands had departed for the war. By July 4th, Philadelphia was ready for a celebration. But a painful legacy of the war remained — soldiers and sailors by the thousands crippled or maimed. Company support for the Union was unequivocal even before the firing on Fort Sumter in April, 1861. . $125 to the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. . $250 to the Citizens Volunteer Hospital Association. . $125 to the U.S.