Troop engagements of the American Civil War, 1861 Troop engagements of the American Civil War, 1861 The following is a list of engagements that took place in 1861 during the American Civil War. The war started on April 12 when Confederate forces commanded by General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; after a thirty-four-hour bombardment, the Union garrison surrendered. There had been no casualties during the bombardment; but the following day while the Union garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, was firing a fifty-gun salute, there was an explosion that resulted in one man being
Fort Jay 1861 as it entered Charleston Harbor. The incident provoked a crisis, prompting other southern states began to more seriously consider secession from the Union. The second effort, with new Army recruits departing from Fort Columbus on April 9, 1861, also failed when it prompted South Carolina forces to fire on Fort Sumter early in the morning of April 12, 1861, resulting in the start of the Civil War. In the early years of the Civil War, the north barracks were used to hold Confederate officers taken as prisoners of war pending transfer to other Union prisons such as Camp Johnson