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
Peace Conference of 1861 president, the only avenue for compromise involved informal negotiations between Unionist southerners and representatives of the incoming Republican government: Congress was no longer a factor. A final convention of only the slave states still in the Union scheduled for June 1861 never occurred because of the events at Fort Sumter. Robert H. Hatton, a Unionist from Tennessee who would later change sides, summed up the feelings of many shortly before Congress adjourned: Peace Conference of 1861 The Peace Conference of 1861 was a meeting of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, at the Willard's Hotel in Washington, DC, on