The Battle of Fort Sumter The First Shots of the American Civil War [Paperback]

On April 12, 1861, the long-simmering tensions between the American North and South exploded as Southern troops in the seceding state of South Carolina fired on the Federal forces at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. The battle of Fort Sumter marked the outbreak of Civil War in the United States. The attack provoked outrage in the North, consolidated support for the newly inaugurated President Lincoln, and fueled the onset of the war that would consume and reshape the country.

In this concise narrative, Wesley Moody explores the long history of tensions that lead to the events at Fort Sumter, the details of the crisis and battle, the impact of Fort Sumter on the unfolding Civil War, and the battle's place in historical memory. Supplemented by primary documents including newspaper coverage, first-person accounts, letters, and government documents, and supported by a companion website, this book provides students with a nuanced understanding of both the long-term and immediate origins of the American Civil War.

1. Origins of Civil War

2. The Capital of Secession

3. Andersons Bold Move

4. Securing Sumter and the Birth of the Confederacy

5. Lincoln, Fox and War

6. The Fall of Fort Sumter

Epilogue

Documents

Bibliography

Index

As America continues to struggle with the social and racial legacies of its civil war, Wesley Moody takes the reader back to that wars origins in an accessible and insightful analysis of the background to, and eventual fall of Fort Sumter in 1861. Expertly locating the microhistory of the stand-off in Charleston Harbor in the wider narrative of a nation dedicated to liberty that clung, at terrible cost, to slavery, Moody relocates Fort Sumter as central to the Civil War story: the ultimate symbol of that conflicts causes, its costs, and its continuing significance for the nation. <l38