Thomas Sumter the "Fighting Gamecocks." Since 1903 the college's teams have been simply known as the "Gamecocks." Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, a fort planned after the War of 1812, was named for him. The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter. Counties in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Alabama are named for him. Thomas Sumter Thomas Sumter (August 14, 1734 – June 1, 1832) was a soldier in the Colony of Virginia militia; a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia during the American
Second Battle of Fort Sumter one of the fort's guns with 320 infantrymen, who repulsed the naval landing party. Gillmore had reduced Fort Sumter to a pile of rubble, but the Confederate flag still waved over the ruins. Union efforts to retake Charleston Harbor began on April 7, 1863, when Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, led the ironclad frigate "New Ironsides", the tower ironclad "Keokuk", and the monitors "Weehawken", "Pasaic", "Montauk", "Patapsco", "Nantucket", "Catskill", and "Nahant" in an attack on the harbor's defenses (The 1863 Battle of Fort Sumter was the largest deployment of monitors in action