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
Maine in the American Civil War Portland commanded the steam sloop USS "Brooklyn" in the action with Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan and with the Confederate gunboats in the Battle of Mobile Bay. Henry K. Thatcher of Thomaston commanded the West Gulf Blockading Squadron in a combined arms action against Mobile, which surrendered April 12, 1865. Maine in the American Civil War As a fervently abolitionist and strongly Republican state, Maine contributed a higher proportion of its citizens to the Union armies than any other, as well as supplying extensive equipment and stores. Although no land battles were fought in Maine, the Battle of Portland Harbor