Page 13 - Volume 15 Number 1

A cannon aimed through a lower gun port of the left flank wall of Fort Sumter. A section of Charleston skyline can be seen in the background.
the American Revolution and the Civil War. Interestingly, Charleston’s most famous events were dramatic losses for what we would now call “The United States” in both conflicts. Sites, memorials and museums dedicated to one or the other can be found scattered throughout the Historic District and surrounding the harbor.
Locked in stalemate in the northern theater of the Revolutionary War, the British decided to shift their focus to the southern theater, beginning in December of 1779, when over 13,500 British troops set sail from New York, bound for Charleston. There, in March 1780, they rendezvoused with additional British troops and quickly began to surround Charleston and lay siege upon her residents and defenders. By April, the American colonists were trapped in the city and British warships controlled the harbor, as well. American commander, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, offered to surrender to save his men. British commander, Gen. Henry Clinton, would not agree to the terms and continued to bombard the city while demanding that Gen. Lincoln surrender himself and his men without condition (terms Lincoln refused). So, the British answered by heating their cannon balls and artillery shells and proceeded to set most of Charleston ablaze. With little choice, on May 12, 1780, Lincoln surrendered unconditionally, dissolving his 5,000-man army and dealing the Americans their worst loss of the Revolution. Today, the Historic District on Peninsula Charleston can be toured on foot or via a variety of tourism trolleys, carriages or shuttles. More stories of the Siege of Charleston, its aftermath, and the eventual liberation of the city come into focus as one
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steps foot inside the sites preserved from a time before the United States existed.
Three generations later, the still-new United States was crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions. Were all men created equal, or was it morally just for some humans to be owner and enslaved by others? South Carolina led the charge on Dec. 20, 1860, by seceding from the Union, effectively dissolving the United States as it existed prior to that day. Immediately thereafter, the rogue state demanded that the U.S. Army surrender control of its military facilities in Charleston Harbor. Instead, U.S. forces secretly consolidated into Fort Sumter (the most heavily fortified of the facilities in and around the harbor). There, they hunkered down for the 1860-61 winter season, surviving and preparing for war on the few supply shipments that could reach them unencumbered. By April 1861, they were as dangerously low on supplies as they were in imminent danger of attack from their non-defensive side (in that their fort was designed to defend harbor attacks from the Atlantic, rather than to defend itself from attacks from its sister- forts which ringed the harbor). Finally, the fateful day arrived and at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, a single 10- inch mortar was fired upon Fort Sumter from nearby Fort Johnson. It was the shot that set off the deadliest conflict in American history. When the signal mortar exploded above Fort Sumter, illuminating its prey, 43 additional guns and mortars began what would be a
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KING AIR MAGAZINE • 11