Fort Sumter is not the easiest national park to get to. You have to take a ferry
from one of two locations, one at Liberty Square in downtown Charleston, or the other one at Patriots
Point in Mount Pleasant. I left from Mount Pleasant. My national park pass would not get me on the ferry for free. So I had to buy my ticket online. Before entering the ferry they scanned my ticket
directly off my phone, and then it was time to get on board the ferry for my journey to Fort Sumter.
All right I'm on the ferry and just waiting to depart. Got to get everybody loaded. Got a
seat near the front, so hopefully I'll get some good video going over to the fort.
And for your convenience a snack bar is located just behind the wheelhouse on the upper deck.
As the boat pulls away from shore, this is a good point to tell you that I have located some
great pictures and photographs of Fort Sumter, before and after the bombardment. That'll give
you a good idea of what happened during the bombardment and how bad the damage was.
And I will show you these pictures and drawings of the fort later in this video.
As we leave to go to Fort Sumter, we passed the USS Yorktown, which is part of the Patriots Point
Naval and Maritime Museum, which you can visit this aircraft carrier, a submarine, and a destroyer, and
aircraft and what they call the Vietnam experience and the medal of honor museum.
I did not get to go to this location on my trip.
Fort Sumter was named after Brigadier General Thomas Sumter who was one of South Carolina's
heroes of the American Revolution. uh He was known for his fierce fighting style,
and he earned the name, nickname of the Carolina Gamecock, which evidently is the derivation that
the University of South Carolina has used for their mascot, the name of the fighting gamecocks.
Now Fort Sumter itself if you is a pentagon. If you looked at it from above, it actually looks
like home plate in baseball. Now just so happened that in 1861 the second in command here at Fort
Sumter was a gentleman named Abner Doubleday, who is credited with actually inventing baseball.
Whether that has anything to do with Sumter or not, I don't know, but I'll leave that to you. All
right I've been riding on the ferry for a little while he passed uh Castle Pinkney that was really
interesting, seeing how that was the war of 1812 fort that most people don't know anything about,
although it wasn't used until the civil war. It's still quite interesting.
Looks like we'll be approaching Fort Sumter soon so Im going to try to get some really
good pictures as we get there. I find this really interesting taking the ferry over there and
I hope the fort is interesting when we get there.
Well we're getting off the boat heading into the fort.
Got to get a picture of the sign.
Now 1860 was a very special year. Something that happens every four years happened, in 1860
the presidential election, and who won the election of 1860?
Lincoln good job. Now Lincoln was not for the eradication or the removal of slavery from
the United States, but rather he was against the expansion of slavery. So this means that slave
states like South Carolina could keep it, but no new territories would be admitted to the union
as a slave state, and this is what directly led to the secession of the state of South Carolina.
South Carolina secedes on December 20th 1860. At this point in time there is only one United
States garrison left in Charleston, stationed at Fort Moultrie across the channel from us.
Days after Christmas 1860, they move under the cover of darkness to the still unfinished
Fort Sumter. Now this act was seen as a direct invasion, by the new republic of South Carolina.
These U.S. forces, here were under the command of a man named Major Robert Anderson. Now Anderson
previously in his life, was a professor at West Point. One of his students was PGT Beauregard,
now aligned with the confederacy. On behalf of the Confederacy, Beauregard asked Anderson to hand over
Fort Sumter. No hard feelings. However, Anderson indicated he had his orders. He was to remain
at Sumter. Beauregard indicated that he too had his orders. He was to open fire. Now some of you may be
familiar with the name Abner Doubleday. He was here as a second in command to Anderson. In a letter to
his wife, written on April 2nd 1861, only 10 days before the first shots were fired. He writes how we
can get along without fighting in the midst of all this lawlessness, it is impossible for me to see.
Now Doubleday saw firsthand those growing tensions here in Charleston, and that coke bottle that we
were talking about before is about to explode, and it does at 4:30 in the morning on April 12,
1861. The first shot is fired from Fort Johnson on James Island, and it explodes over Fort Sumter.
Now this was the signal shot for all other Confederate positions in Charleston Harbor
to open fire. The whole bombardment lasts 34 hours. By the end of those 34 hours, the Union here is
low on supplies. Fort Sumter's on fire. They had no choice, but to agree to terms of evacuation.
Now there were no deaths for those whole 34 hours. Not until the lowering of the United States flag.
Halfway through a 100 gun salute to the colors, Private Howe was instantly killed
by an accidental explosion. That's the first death of the American Civil War.
Over the next four years over 600,000 would follow. Drawings of the fort in 1861 showed a
fort that was substantial and well defended, that could protect the city of Charleston.
Even this drawing that the park service uses, shows a well-built fort. But on April 12, 1861,
that all changed. Fort Sumter was bombarded from many different locations in Charleston.
And the results were devastating.
Here it looks like they're doing some gun preservation work.
This is quite interesting, this is a shell that's still stuck in the wall from the bombardment.
One reason it might still be here is, you look at this layer. This is a layer of stone is made
from sea shells. It absorbs impact a lot better than brick. That might be why the shell is still
here.
Now I'm on the back side of the fort, opposite where the ferry let us off.
Believe it or not, this is where the Sally Port was, which was the original entrance to the fort.
You wouldn't know it today, because this side's pretty much been blasted away.
Okay, back into the fort through a small side entrance, not very large.
On the return trip, we passed close enough to Castle Pinkney
to get a good view of the fort, that was built in 1809 to protect Charleston.
All right we've done Fort Sumter. Now we're on the boat heading back. I had a
great time, but i just felt like the tour was too short, like there was more I wanted to do.
So I recommend taking the tour. But if there'd be one suggestion for the park service, make the tour
a little bit longer, because the time on the island just wasn't enough. Well until next time, goodbye.