And the Confederates had cut off food supplies. This war began, really, due to that ancient law of siege warfare, that you can't survive forever without food. GOODHEART: Yeah, Lincoln was in a very difficult position as April 1861 began because here was this little garrison in Charleston Harbor, and they were literally being starved out. It would make it seem like the conflict was one, quote, "upon slavery or about slavery," unquote, whereas the crisis must be framed as a question simply of union or disunion. You paraphrase Secretary of State William Seward, who said that, you know, keeping the garrison at Fort Sumter would be like the bellicose act of a hard-line abolitionist regime. GROSS: And there was controversy within - disagreement within the Lincoln administration over what to do about Fort Sumter. And suffice to say, they miscalculated hugely. In fact, the Southerners sort of thought that they would be able to drive the Yankees off of Confederate territory and then that the North would feel that it wasn't worthwhile to fight to bring the South back into the Union. I don't think that they intended to certainly launch a Civil War on the scale that the war became. It had no military importance, really, at all.īut to the South, it was freighted with symbolism, and their great miscalculation was that it turned out to be freighted with symbolism for the North, as well. GOODHEART: Well, this little island, it was this sort of useless, two-acre piece of federal real estate. It was a great symbolic statement of Southern sovereignty, Southern nationhood. GOODHEART: Well, there had been this little garrison of Union soldiers, 60 soldiers and a brass band, sitting on a two-acre island in the middle of Charleston Harbor, the very hotbed of secession for the past four months.Īnd at this moment, the South decided that they couldn't tolerate this little garrison there any longer, and they opened fire on the fort. GROSS: So this is the 150th anniversary of the first shot in the Civil War. ADAM GOODHEART (Author, "1861: The Civil War Awakening"): Thank you, Terry. Goodheart also directs Washington College's C.V. Goodheart also contributes to the New York Times Civil War Web series, "Disunion," which describes events 150 years ago using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments. The book is called "1861: The Civil War Awakening." He says he wanted to write about how ordinary citizens and national leaders experienced and responded to sudden crisis and change as it unfolded. That year, 1861, is the subject of the new book by my guest, Adam Goodheart.
The Civil War began 150 years ago today, when the provisional forces of the Confederate States opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
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