Fort Sumter in Pictures: The Civil War’s First Battle – National Geographic

Image Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
On April 12, 1861—150 years ago today—Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the U.S. Civil War on Fort Sumter, a Federal stronghold at the mouth of Charleston Harbor (map) in South Carolina.
(Read “Fort Sumter: How Civil War Began With a Bloodless Battle.”)
With the election of Abraham Lincoln five months earlier, the long-simmering threat of disunion had finally swept across the United States. Powerful

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