Attack on Fort Sumter
4/12/202612 min
April 11, 2026
On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on South Carolina’s Fort Sumter, South Carolina had left the Union the previous December, When Abraham Lincoln took office in March, 1861, seven Southern states had left the Union, forming their own provisional government, The Confederate government rested on the belief that Black men are not equal to white men, Northerners rejected the white southerners’ attempt to destroy the principles of the Declaration of Independence, After the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion against the government, The Civil War would take hundreds of thousands of lives at huge cost, But by its end, the institution of human enslavement was destroyed.
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First 90 secondsHeather Cox Richardson· Host0:00
[on-hold music] April 11th, 2026. At four thirty AM on April 12th, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, a federal fort built on an artificial island in Charleston Harbor. Attacking the fort seemed a logical outcome of events that had been in play for at least four months. On December twentieth, 1860, as soon as it was clear Abraham Lincoln had won the 1860 presidential election, South Carolina lawmakers had taken their state out of the union. "The whole town of Charleston was in an uproar," Elizabeth Alston recalled. "Parades, shouting, firecrackers, bells ringing, cannon on the forts booming, flags waving, and excited people thronging the streets." Mississippi had followed suit on January ninth, 1861, Florida on January tenth, Alabama on January eleventh, Georgia on January nineteenth, Louisiana on January twenty-sixth, and Texas on February first. By the time Lincoln took the oath of office on March fourth, 1861, seven southern states had left the union and formed their own provisional government that protected human enslavement. Their move had come because the elite