Fort Sumter Flag Fort Sumter Flag The Fort Sumter Flag is a historic United States flag with a distinctive, diamond-shaped pattern of 33 stars. When the main flagpole was felled by shot during the bombardment of Fort Sumter by confederate forces, Second Lieutenant Norman Hall rushed to retrieve the flag and remount it on a makeshift pole. The flag was lowered by Major Robert Anderson on April 14, 1861 when he surrendered Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, at the outset of the American Civil War. Anderson brought the flag to New York City for an April 20, 1861 patriotic
Battle of Fort Sumter he had lowered in 1861. Two of the cannons used at Fort Sumter were later presented to Louisiana State University by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was president of the university before the war began. The U.S. Post Office Department released the Fort Sumter Centennial issue as the first in the series of five stamps marking the Civil War Centennial on April 12, 1961, at the Charleston post office. The stamp was designed by Charles R. Chickering. It illustrates a seacoast gun from Fort Sumter aimed by an officer in a typical uniform of the time. The background features palmetto