Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter

On the fiftieth anniversary of the defense of Fort Sumter, author Eba Anderson Lawton, Major Anderson's daughter, recounts the story of her father's command of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War. Kentucky-born Major Robert Anderson was the commanding officer of the Union Army troops in Charleston, South Carolina when the state became the first to secede from the Union in 1860. Remaining loyal to the Union and without orders from Washington, Anderson surreptitiously moved his men from the hard-to-defend Fort Moultrie to the more substantial Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.

Lawton recounts how the men spent months in the fort under siege, with no reinforcements and no provisions. On April 12, 1861, at the command of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter, marking the beginning of the Civil War. Ten thousand rebel forces lined up against the sixty Union troops. On April 14, after a valiant fight that lasted 34 hours, Anderson accepted terms of evacuation and left with his men, saluting, lowering, and removing the American flag. He sailed for New York City, where he was met with great appreciation for the stand he had taken.

Major Anderson returned to Charleston on April 14, 1865, where he raised over the ruins of Fort Sumter the flag he had lowered four years earlier. That same night, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Washington, D.C.