Troop engagements of the American Civil War, 1861 be the Confederate Territory of Arizona and raised several militia companies, which fought several skirmishes with both the Union forces remaining in the territory and the Apache tribes. 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
Battle of Fort Sumter fort was nearly completed, but the fortress was thus far garrisoned by a single soldier, who functioned as a lighthouse keeper, and a small party of civilian construction workers. Under the cover of darkness on December 26, six days after South Carolina declared its secession, Anderson abandoned the indefensible Fort Moultrie, ordering its guns spiked and its gun carriages burned, and surreptitiously relocated his command by small boats to Sumter. South Carolina authorities considered Anderson's move to be a breach of faith. Governor Francis W. Pickens believed that President Buchanan had made implicit promises to him to keep Sumter unoccupied