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The battle of Fort Sumter is one of the first and most important battles of the American Civil War. It is famed for being the bloodless battle that started the bloodiest war in American history. What you may not know about this battle is that this battle helped the Southern states sell the fight against the Northern Union as a fight against Northern aggression. It gave the Southern states away to show their poorer citizens, uninterested in the politics of slavery a reason to fight. After all, they threatened them.

Unsurprisingly, the battle of Fort Sumter took place on Fort Sumter, located in South Carolina. According to Abner Doubleday, Union Major General and important soldier in the battle of Fort Sumter, the fort was “The first thing that attracted the eye of the stranger upon approaching Charleston from the sea”. It was supposed to be a simple project, but ended up taking far longer than expected, the interior not being finished even for the civil war battle itself. The original earth that the fort was planned to be built upon was just sand, they had to bring massive stone blocks to cover the ground and make a good foundation to be built upon. 10,000 tons of granite and 60,000 tons of rock had to be hauled across the ocean from distant locations to build the fort. Despite lawsuits and complaints from the state of South Carolina, by 1860 an imposing, 5 sided, three tiered fort glared across the ocean.

Fort Sumter had many important uses and features. For one, it had been designed to hold 135 guns. While it was never completely finished, the exterior was finished and had 5-foot thick walls, capable of handling intense fire. While only 2.4 acres, its height of 50 feet allowed it to accommodate 650 soldiers. While the nearby Fort Moultrie was also available, it was on land, and was far more susceptible to a land invasion, dangerous so close to Confederate territory. Union major Robert Anderson moved here for that reason.

The battle of Fort Sumter is a very important one, for the civil war and for the history of America.  While southern states had separated, there were no actual fighting at the time. Tensions were high, and it all broke at this one battle. The battle of fort sumter, led to the bloodiest war in american history. By capturing Fort Sumter in the first act of war, this fort in South Carolina became a symbol of the Southern rebellion. Ironically, the battle of Fort Sumter had two casualties. Both were from the evacuation.

The South was afraid to attack without some form of “provocation”. Confederate leaders were afraid that many southerners, poor and uncaring of the pro-slavery cause, would not support an uncalled for attack on northernern troops. They successfully passed off the battle of Fort Sumter as self defense so that poor southerner farmers would feel committed to the cause and fight for their country.

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This is a cannon carriage found within the walls of fort sumter. It once held a cannon now gone missing. It would have been attempted to be used to protect the fort.

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This image shows what the artillery used by the Confederates in the battle looked like.

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Primary Source: Walt Whitman's Opinion (1881)

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Primary Source: Walt Whitman's Opinion (1881)

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"Even after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all realized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of the free States looked upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina, from a feeling of one-half of contempt, and the other half composed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be joined in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national official predicted it would blow over "in sixty days" and folks generally believed the prediction."

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Thesis, Claim, Evidence, Reasoning Chart

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Thesis, Claim, Evidence, Reasoning Chart

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Thesis: The Battle of Fort Sumter was the start of a war that was planned to be short, but ended up being America's bloodiest war.
Claim: Fort Sumter was the inciting incident of the Civil War, and is the event that led to huge changes in the nation, though nobody realized it at the time.
Evidence: "Even after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave States... were not at all realized at the North..."
Reasoning: Whitman realized that, in hindsight, Fort Sumter was a very important battle in the war simply because it was the first, and nobody realized at the time that it was the inciting incident of the bloodiest war in American history. Even though Fort Sumter was bombarded, the North was oblivious to the toll this war would take.

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https://app.mapme.com/8f10f476-0f07-4bb2-89e1-df2b7c9a8e14/story/9b2aaedf-0ce0-4729-9e49-6308bdb41336/location/d0119ece-936a-4

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This is an artist's rendition of what the bombardment looked like. It depicts the fort being held down with the American flag proudly flying in its center.