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
Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston's harbor, including Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, which were not among the sites seized initially. Fort Moultrie on Sullivan Island was the oldest—it was the site of fortifications since 1776—and was the headquarters of the U.S. Army garrison. However, it had been designed as a gun platform for defending the harbor, and its defenses against land-based attacks were feeble; during the crisis, the Charleston newspapers commented that sand dunes had piled up against the walls in such a way that the wall could easily be scaled. When the garrison began clearing away the dunes, the papers objected. Major