Fort Barrancas mostly by enslaved African-American workers. January 8, 1861, more than three months before the American Civil War officially started at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, a company of 50 U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Barrancas, under the command of John H. Winder fired upon a militia. This militia was Florida state troops under Colonel William Henry Chase demanding that the U.S. troops surrender the fort. Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer, acting commander in Winder's absence, had the troops fire shots meant to repel the militia. Lt Slemmer knew that Fort Pickens was easier to defend, so he spiked the guns at
Fort Sumter displayed in the fort's museum. A supply ship "Star of the West" took all the garrison members to New York City. There they were welcomed and honored with a parade on Broadway. 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", "Passaic", "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 up