Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park

On my current trip up the southeastern coast of the U.S., I will be visiting several forts, built over a span of 150 years. Most of them I had never heard of before researching the National Park units. Today, though, I visited one fort every school child in America knows (or knew back in my day when schools still taught history). This is Fort Sumter. Its call to fame is being the site of the first hostile action of the American Civil War.

And I was rather disappointed.

To get to the fort, located on an island in the harbor, one takes a 35-minute ferry ride from the visitor’s center in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s $28 for seniors on top of park admission (though I used my Lifetime Senior Pass). The fort is a shell of what it once was. Understandable, given that after the South Carolina militia bombarded it for 34 hours in April 1861, northern troops fired on it from 1863 on – almost two years – pretty much reducing the fort to rubble.

Oddly, the Union bombardment actually made the fort stronger. The occupying Confederate troops would pile up the rubble, then cover it with dirt, making a new wall that was even harder to dislodge. The fort was only occupied when Confederate troops left it following the fall of the city to Union forces in 1865.

I mentioned that I was disappointed. It’s not so much disappointment in the fort, but the experience. After the ferry ride over, you have exactly one hour to visit the fort. With a small museum and with numerous displays around the inside and outside of the fort, it is impossible to see all there is in under an hour. I do appreciate that the ferry system allows the park to regulate the number of people on the island at any one time, so it was not too packed, and I am sure on a summer weekend, the crowds waiting for the ferry are much larger, so there is a reason to get people on and off fairly quickly. Unfortunately, even on my mid-week, late autumn ferry there were still enough people on the island that I often had to wait at each exhibit until I could get close enough to read it. With that one-hour limit, many signs went unread.

One benefit of being on the first ferry in the morning is being able to watch the flag-raising ceremony at the fort. The ranger asked for volunteers to help hold the huge flag as it is unfurled before being hauled up. They needed about 20-30 people to do this! The flag is the same size as the flag that flew during the bombardment, complete with only 34 stars. It was even more special to be able to watch this ceremony on Veteran’s Day.

The Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter lasted 34 hours with over 3,000 shells being fired. Incredibly, not one person was killed in this battle on either side. Following the surrender before leaving the fort, the Union troops fired a 100-gun salute. A misfire on one shot killed one soldier and mortally wounded another. Pvt Daniel Hough became the first casualty in a war that would claim 620,000 more lives. History is ironic if nothing else. The troops were then allowed safe passage back to the north.

You may notice in the photograph of me standing by the park sign that it shows the name of “Fort Sumter National Monument”. The park was renamed in March 2019 to its current name of Fort Sumter and “Fort Moultrie National Historical Park”. Fort Moultrie is located north of Fort Sumter on Sullivan’s Island and is my afternoon destination. I will chronicle it in a separate blog post.

Steve