With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President on Nov ember 6th,  1860, politics in Charleston, South Carolina took on a decidedly belligerent tone. Within  four weeks, the state had called a Secession Convention and unanimously voted itself out of the Union. In the view of South Carolinians, all things belonging to the Federal Government in the state  were then expected to be turned over to the new Republic of South Carolina. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the small

As dawn was breaking over Charleston Harbor on the morning of May 12, 1862, sentries on the parapet of Fort Sumter saw a familiar sight,...

During the siege of Fort Sumter in the last half of the Civil War, the United States Army and Navy turned to the use of large Parrott...

The National Park Service, a division of the Department of the Interior, has had a presence in the Charleston Area for over 75 years....

Fort Sumter was the focal point for the opening acts of the American Civil War and became an important symbol of resistance to both the...

Within the legacy of Fort Sumter’s iconic role in the arc of the Civil War, is a little-known fact that enslaved African Americans were...