THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Civil War begins as Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter – 1861

Via History.com

Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins | History| Smithsonian Magazine

Battle of Fort Sumter, April 1861 (U.S. National Park Service)

Four of the bloodiest years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”

As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana—had followed South Carolina’s lead.

In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.

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23 Comments
Bub
Bub
April 12, 2023 7:14 am

The war wasn’t about slavery:

How We Know The So-Called “Civil War” Was Not Over Slavery

Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery.

Here we have absolute total proof that the North wanted the South kept in the Union far more than the North wanted to abolish slavery.

k31
k31
  Bub
April 12, 2023 10:18 am

Yankee savages will believe any lie to sooth their guilt.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron
  k31
April 12, 2023 12:19 pm

Forsooth … it did soothe their guilt …

Anonymous
Anonymous
April 12, 2023 7:59 am

And it’s been downhill ever since.

GrungeVet
GrungeVet
April 12, 2023 8:11 am

Yet another avoidable bloodbath. Lincoln entirely instigated this scenario, hoping that the Confederates would take the bait and fire on the resupply ship, as his May 1st, 1861 memo to Cpt. Fox makes clear.

https://dfreality.substack.com/p/the-frankenstein-formula-part-i

MrLiberty
MrLiberty
  GrungeVet
April 12, 2023 8:17 am

The strategy of every president that has provoked war.

Dangerous Variant
Dangerous Variant
April 12, 2023 8:21 am

I had almost forgotten about how the whole Civil War thing kicked off. After the great Insurrection of Jan 6, these skirmishes in the dustbin of history are pale and backward. Those barbarian days of the past when all those white males kept fighting each other are thankfully long gone. Now we can insurrect without a single fatality – and still wipe Lincolns ass with the scrolls of we the “people” and come out the other side less pale and more woke. Because we love our freedom that much.

Arizona Bay
Arizona Bay
April 12, 2023 8:45 am

Not a single person was killed at Fort Sumter. The press always omits that fact. Lincoln used the fort as a defacto embargo on southern shipping to provoke action.

Jlw
Jlw
April 12, 2023 9:22 am

I wish we had picked our own damn cotton! I know it was not about slavery but damn! We have paid for it ever since

lamont cranston
lamont cranston
April 12, 2023 10:45 am

I’m sick and tired of the Yankee Racist Practice of misnaming The War of Yankee Aggression as a “Civil War”.

Anonymous
Anonymous
April 12, 2023 11:16 am

The beginning of the end of the Southern Hillbilly Plantation Owners and their plan to extend their slavery around the world. The funny part is they really enjoyed getting destroyed. That is why they are still fighting that war to this day. They enjoy being the victim. In a way, they are exactly like the socialists who are always looking for new ways to proclaim victim status.

Of course, if the mentally defective brain-dead Southern Hillbillies are to be believed, Lincoln started the entire war. Never mind the evidence is overwhelming that the opposite is true. Lincoln didn’t want a war. He was willing to do whatever it took to preserve the Union. If that meant getting rid of wild herds of Southern Hillbilly animals who didn’t respect the Constitution, so be it. The trouble is, the Southern Hillbillies enjoyed getting shot. If they didn’t, they would have never started their war against the Constitution and the Union.

What does this prove? All Southern Hillbillies are animalistic criminals who trained their slaves to be animalistic criminals. That is why crime is out of control in the socialist owned and operated cities. Of course, cross-breeding with their slaves helped this along. The educated black people who act civilized are the ones who don’t have the Southern Hillbilly animalistic DNA. That is why it is so important when doing medical experiments that may result in death to always use a Southern Hillbilly. That way if something goes wrong, zero loss because there are plenty more to use.

The Southern Hillbillies are why socialists exist today. Without them, socialists would not have any reason to exist.

The good news is the Southern Hillbillies can’t cope with actual winter. A little bit of a rumor of ice or snow and they quickly proceed with implementing new ways to kill themselves. This was demonstrated a few years ago when Georgia supposedly had an ice storm and the Southern Hillbillies killed themselves by driving into trees because the road was going to ice over next week.

Of course, according to the Southern Hillbillies, Grant and Sherman cheated by out-thinking and overwhelming the Southern Hillbilly animals. Especially after word arrived regarding the outcome at Andersonville, owned and operated by Southern Hillbilly animals who enjoyed taking wild potshots at the Union prisoners just for grins and giggles.

GrungeVet
GrungeVet
  Anonymous
April 12, 2023 12:24 pm

To Gustavus V. Fox

Capt. G. V. Fox Washington, D. C.

My dear Sir May 1, 1861

I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test. By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground; while, by an accident, for which you were in no wise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent was, you were deprived of a war vessel with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprize.

I most cheerfully and truly declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort, have greatly heightened you, in my estimation.

For a daring and dangerous enterprize, of a similar character, you would, to-day, be the man, of all my acquaintances, whom I would select.

You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.

Very truly your friend A. LINCOLN

Lincoln wanted the Confederates to take the bait, as he plainly makes clear in this letter to his co-conspirator.

Go fuck yourself.

Sincerely,
A proud Southern hillbilly.

flash
flash
  Anonymous
April 12, 2023 12:31 pm

Southern hillbillies i.e. Appalachians mostly sides with the Union tyrants, dumbass…smh. History, get some.

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Here’s some sage advise for future commenting on TBP. Better to keep quiet and let people think you’re an idiot than speak up and confirm it.

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beau
beau
  Anonymous
April 12, 2023 12:34 pm

the paid troll opens its keyboard and reveals its impenetrable ignorance.

k31
k31
  Anonymous
April 12, 2023 12:42 pm

Listen, kike, 99% of Southerners did not own slaves.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron
  k31
April 12, 2023 6:29 pm

And many of those slaves weren’t blacks — they were from Ireland and Scotland and even children who’d been kidnapped in England …

rhs jr
rhs jr
  Anonymous
April 14, 2023 1:00 am

People like the ignorant ass that wrote the anti-South rant above make me wish for a States Rights do over; a great wrong needs to be righted , and next time the South and West will free the White Slaves of the Union and I wouldn’t be surprised to see WDC, NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and Philadelphia burn down to their sewers. The Yankee Fed killing the US Treasury dollar, cryptos, gold & silver coins , and even barter, and then imposing their Rothschild FedCoin controlled spyware should start it.

flash
flash
April 12, 2023 12:21 pm

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….

“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”
London Times, November 7, 1861

“Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.”
President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A.

“…the contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena.”
President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A., address to the Mississippi legislature in 1881.

“Sirs, you have no reason to be ashamed of your Confederate dead; see to it they have no reason to be ashamed of you.”
Robert Lewis Dabney, Chaplain for Stonewall Jackson

beau
beau
April 12, 2023 12:36 pm

lincoln is the greatest mass murderer in the history of this nation.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron
  beau
April 12, 2023 6:31 pm

He’s a rank amateur compared with TheFauci … who not only has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths by medication/jabs going back to the ’80s … but for destroying a nation’s economy, it’s children’s futures, and for pushing the United States over the top in terms of financial ruination …

Anonymous
Anonymous
April 12, 2023 2:36 pm

Several points 1)Abraham Lincoln never advocated freeing enslved people. Lincoln was a “Free Soiler”. As a poorer Kentucky white man growing up on the edges of the frontier he was opposed to the spread of slvery into the territories Later Lincoln became a member of the Illinois chapter of the American Colonizatiion Society which was formed in 1816 to send “free Blacks” back to Africa or some place outside the US. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1521.html Even in his debates against Douglas Lincoln stated if elected he had no authority or intention to free enslaved people. 2) In a technical sense The War Between the States was not a civil war since the Confederate leaders were not attempting to take over the federal government, they took the dramatic steps to withdrew and form their own separate and sovereign nation. 3) Slavery was the economic engine that empowered the Confederacy. Their leaders depended upon slavery and cotton for survival in a global market. Everyone knew this, the Confederate States of America currency had picutres of Blacks picking cotton on them! https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/object-of-intrigue-confederate-currency 4) The Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves whatsoever, none! Lincoln had no authority to do so, it was a political and PR gambit to keep England and France from joining the war on the side of the Confederacy since the Southern states were supplying them cotton and other key raw materials and products. The EP did not even address the slave holding border states or the states in the union that still had slaver! 5) The war was the most bloddy conflic in US history up to that point.
Lastly, we have been thoroughly lied to about this nation’s history especaillly about its founding, how the economcy works/runs, the influence of plutocrats and political elites and all the wars the lower classes have been duped into fighting to enrich the ruling classes.

Anonymous
Anonymous
  Anonymous
April 12, 2023 2:47 pm

Please excuse/disregard the duplication my new harddrive did not have TBP book markred and I had to reinput my info.

Ginger
Ginger
April 12, 2023 5:36 pm

As a youth in the sixties my Father would load us up and make the pilgrimage to Charleston to celebrate Easter Sunrise on the Battery, a long trip back then. We would stay at the Fort Sumter Hotel which sat on the battery and it had a large mural of the bombardment. To think back it had only been a hundred years before, which seemed like a long time before but now approaching seventy the time span does not seem that distant. Would always think how cool it would have been the guy in the red shirt under the flag. I’ve got one of the Battle Flags that flew over the State Capital.

https://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:86224

General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was one of those guys that always looked like he did not give a flying rat’s ass, he proved himself over and over again during the whole conflict, especially at Petersburg Va.
.