Fort Sumter National Monument

1214 Middle Street
Sullivan's Island, SC 29482

Phone:
Visitor Information:
843-883-3123
Park Headquarters:
843-883-3123

Explore Where The American Civil War Began!

Decades of growing strife between North and South erupted in civil war on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on this Federal fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later. Union forces would try for nearly four years to take it back.

Fort Moultrie

Fort Moultrie is a unit of Fort Sumter National Monument. The site is located on Sullivan's Island and is accessible by car. Learn about 171 years of American seacoast defenses.

Places to Picnic

Fort Sumter
There is no food available at Fort Sumter and picnicking is not permitted inside the fort. A snack bar is available on board the ferry boat. While a water fountain is available at the fort, visitors are encouraged to bring water and snacks with them.

Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center
(300 Concord Street, Charleston)
In downtown Charleston there are multitudes of restaurants accessible by car or the Downtown Area Shuttle. There are also several restaurants within walking distance.
Fort Moultrie
There is no food available at Fort Moultrie. A picnic facility is located at the Fort Moultrie Visitor Center. While a water fountain is available at the visitor center, visitors are encouraged to bring water and snacks.

Fort Sumter History

On December 20, 1860 South Carolina delegates to a special secession convention voted unanimously to secede from the United States of America. In November, Abraham Lincoln had been elected President of the United States with little support from the southern states. 

The critical significance of this election was expressed in South Carolina’s Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession: “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of president of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.” The Declaration claimed that secession was justified because the Federal government had violated the constitutional compact by encroaching upon the rights of the sovereign states. 

As the primary violation, the Declaration listed the failure of 14 northern states to enforce the Federal Fugitive Slave Act or to restrict the actions of antislavery organizations. “Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.” 

The Declaration expressed South Carolina’s fear that “The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.”

Fort Moultrie History

The first fort on Sullivan's Island was still incomplete when Commodore Sir Peter Parker and nine warships attacked it on June 28, 1776. After a nine-hour battle, the ships were forced to retire. Charleston was saved from British occupation, and the fort was named in honor of its commander, Colonel. William Moultrie. In 1780 the British finally captured Charleston, abandoning it only on the advent of peace.

After the Revolution, Fort Moultrie was neglected, and by 1791 little of it remained. Then, in 1793, war broke out between England and France. The next year Congress, seeking to safeguard American shores, authorized the first system of nationwide coastal fortifications. 

A second Fort Moultrie, one of 20 new forts along the Atlantic coast, was completed in 1798. It too suffered from neglect and was finally destroyed by a hurricane in 1804. By 1807 many of the other First System fortifications were in need of extensive repair. Congress responded by authorizing funds for a Second System, which included a third Fort Moultrie. By 1809 a new brick fort stood on Sullivan's Island.

Between 1809 and 1860 Fort Moultrie changed little. The parapet was altered and the armament modernized, but the big improvement in Charleston’s defenses during this period was the construction of Fort Sumter at the entrance of the harbor. The forts ringing Charleston Harbor – Moultrie, Sumter, Johnson, and Castle Pinckney – were meant to complement each other, but ironically received their baptism of fire as opponents. 

In December 1860 South Carolina seceded from the Union, and the Federal garrison abandoned Fort Moultrie for the stronger Sumter. Three and a half months later, Confederate troops shelled Sumter into submission, plunging the nation into civil war. In April 1863, Federal iron-clads and shore batteries began a 20-month bombardment of Sumter and Moultrie, yet Charleston’s defenses held. 

When the Confederate army evacuated the city in February 1865, Fort Sumter was little more than a pile of rubble and Fort Moultrie lay hidden under the band of sand that protected its walls from Federal shells. The new rifled cannon used during the Civil War had demolished the brick-walled fortifications.

Fort Moultrie was modernized in the 1870s, employing concepts developed during the war. Huge new cannon were installed, and magazines and bombproofs were built of thick concrete, then buried under tons of earth to absorb the explosion of heavy shells. 

In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed Secretary of War William C. Endicott to head a board to review the coastal defenses in light of newly developing weapons technology. The system that emerged, named for Endicott, again modernized the nation’s fortifications. New batteries of concrete and steel were constructed in Fort Moultrie. Larger weapons were emplaced elsewhere on Sullivan's Island, and the old fort became just a small part of the Fort Moultrie Military Reservation that covered much of the island.

As technology changed, harbor defense became more complex. The world wars brought new threats of submarine and aerial attack and required new means of defense at Moultrie. Yet these armaments also became obsolete as nuclear weapons and guided missiles altered the entire concept of national defense.

Today Fort Moultrie has been restored to portray the major periods of its history. A visitor to the fort moves steadily backwards in time from the World War II Harbor Entrance Control Post to the site of the Palmetto-log fort of 1776.

Did You Know?
The first Union shot of the Civil War was fired by Captain Abner Doubleday. He was the second senior officer at Fort Sumter, under Major Robert Anderson.

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