Fort Sumter Secession Crisis

The Fort Sumter secession crisis began after Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 6 November 1860. South Carolina seceded in December, followed by other slave states, while the outgoing Buchanan administration and the incoming Republican leadership disputed how federal forts, arsenals and customs property should be defended.

Major Robert Anderson moved the United States garrison in Charleston Harbor to Fort Sumter, where dwindling supplies turned the fortress into the central test of federal authority. After Lincoln chose to send provisions, Confederate forces commanded by P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on 12 April 1861. Anderson surrendered two days later, and the attack prompted mobilisation for a civil war.

For historical books, the crisis connects secession, slavery, presidential transition, military honour, Charleston society and the failure of compromise. Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest reconstructs the five months through Lincoln, Anderson, Edmund Ruffin, Mary Boykin Chesnut and the political figures around the fort.