Civil War Begins -- April 12, 1861
The American Civil War began at 4:30am on April 12, 1861, when General Pierre G. T. Beauregard's Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Beauregard's bombardment lasted for thirty-three hours until Union Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. The Confederates took down the stars and stripes and raised the stars and bars at Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter represented a symbol of state sovereignty to both the United States and Confederate States of America (CSA). The Confederate Provisional Congress considered it an outpost under foreign control in an important harbor. Negotiations between the CSA and the United States over Fort Sumter failed, however. On April 9, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Beauregard to attack Fort Sumter if Anderson refused a final appeal to surrender. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter placed responsibility for starting the Civil War on the shoulders of the Confederacy.
The fall of Fort Sumter brought the secession crisis to the breaking point. On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve in the U.S. Army for a period of ninety days. In doing so, Lincoln answered the South's challenge to civil war. Following Sumter, Lincoln believed that the insurrection was "too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary process of judicial proceedings." It would be settled by force of arms. In the weeks that followed, four more states-Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, the South's most populous state-seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.
Abraham Lincoln's decisive action following the fall of Fort Sumter inaugurated a wartime presidency in which the executive superseded the other two branches of the federal government. As commander in chief, Lincoln was responsible for how the war was conducted, and he transformed the President's role as commander in chief and as chief executive into a powerful new position. In several emergencies, Lincoln exercised powers not constitutionally granted to a President and ignored Supreme Court decisions ruling his conduct unconstitutional. Still he was committed to preserving the Union and thus vindicating democracy no matter what the consequences to himself, and his strong presidency helped save the Union.
For more information, please visit the Abraham Lincoln home page or go to more Events in Presidential History.
