Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter stands on an artificial island at the entrance to Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, built beginning in 1829 as part of a system of coastal fortifications the United States constructed after the War of 1812, its pentagonal brick walls designed to rise up to 50 feet above the harbor and mount more than 100 cannons. The fort became the site of the opening engagement of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces bombarded the Union garrison holding the still-unfinished structure into surrender after a 34-hour artillery exchange. Confederate forces held the fort for most of the war despite prolonged Union bombardment that reduced much of its upper brick walls to rubble, and the structure was substantially rebuilt and reinforced with additional batteries in later decades. Fort Sumter is preserved today as a national monument administered by the National Park Service, its surviving walls and gun emplacements maintained as a record of both antebellum coastal defense engineering and the opening battle of the Civil War.