Civil War plus 150 years - Fort Sumter

The American Civil War began 150 years ago today, when the Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter, an island in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor.

The Confederates under Brig. General P.G.T. Beauregard bombarded the fort for 34 hours. No one was wounded. And when the "battle" was over and U.S. Major Robert Anderson agreed to evacuate (rather than "surrender") his Union troops, the Confederates actually helped put out the fires they'd started.

(Click on the Harper's Weekly illustration to enlarge it.)

How tentatively some very big wars begin. By April 1865, the Civil War would have taken the lives of 620,000 Americans, North and South.

Frank Warner

Comments

[Atlanta]

Not about good or bad, but I think we must recognize the Civl War for what it was, a war mainly about slavery and how to end it. This doesn’t make the South bad and the North good, as both sides engaged in a heinous practice in order to be prosperous at the expense of an entire people. The fact is, slavery was the issue, and we are, as a nation, both North and South, Red and Blue, conservative and liberal, completely responsible for it. May God have mercy.

[jb007]

This doesn’t make the South bad and the North good, as both sides engaged in a heinous practice in order to be prosperous at the expense of an entire people.