The attack on Fort Sumter was the culmination of several months of escalating tension between the federal government and the states that were declaring secession. As it dragged on for months, the standoff at Fort Sumter became well known throughout the country and provided a specific incident that helped shape how the country understood the issues at stake in the coming Civil War. When Confederate forces finally attacked Fort Sumter, it became absolutely clear that there would be no peaceful road back to Union. Anyone who cared about preserving the American system of government would need to act now, or allow the Union to dissolve.

Following the election of President Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, Southern states began taking steps towards declaring their secession from the Union. South Carolina was the first state to formally declare secession in December 1860. In their declaration of secession, the delegates made clear that Lincoln's election was the final straw, as they feared the federal government would move to dismantle the institution of slavery. They wrote:

"For twenty-five years this agitation [against slavery] has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that 'Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction." [1]

One of the immediate problems brought about by this declaration was the question of what was to be done with federal property within the state of South Carolina. Those who declared secession insisted that the federal government no longer had any claim to property within the state, as South Carolina was no longer part of the Union. But Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln both believed that secession was illegal and therefore invalid.

Major Robert Anderson was the commander of federal troops in Charleston, South Carolina when the state declared secession. Although he was a Kentuckian and former slave owner, Major Anderson remained loyal to the Union. In December 1860, he moved federal forces out of Fort Moultrie and into the nearby and more defensible Fort Sumter, which sits on an island in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

In January 1861, President Buchanan ordered an unarmed ship on a resupply mission to Fort Sumter to provide needed supplies to the federal troops there. South Carolina (which was not yet part of the soon-to-be-formed Confederate States) fired on the ship, which was forced to turn back. Later that month, the governor of South Carolina issued a formal demand that federal troops withdraw, though this request was refused. The situation had reached a stalemate, and the standoff drew national attention.

By the time Lincoln was sworn in as President in March 1861, the supplies at Fort Sumter were running perilously low. Without additional supplies, troops would be forced to abandon the fort by mid-April. In early April, Lincoln decided to attempt another resupply mission, and he notified both Major Anderson and the South Carolina government of his intent. [2] Jefferson Davis, now President of the Confederate government, was adamant that Fort Sumter not be resupplied. On Davis's order, the Confederate forces issued one final an ultimatum for Major Anderson to surrender, which he refused to do. When it was clear that the federal government still intended to resupply the fort, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter beginning in the early morning hours on April 12,1861. The attack continued for nearly two days, until Major Anderson finally surrendered.

In the book Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War, historian David Detzer describes the response to the attack. He writes:

"Had Southern leaders like Jefferson Davis been aware of it, the reactions were ominous for the Confederacy. Northerners who had shrugged at secession a few days earlier felt a different and strange emotion when confronted with the reality of the Confederacy's attack on Major Anderson's tiny band. During the past months the plight of Robert Anderson and his few score men had become well known. This attack instantly turned them into martyrs. [Note: No one was killed in the attack.] When even the spectators on Charleston's waterfront came to cheer every time one of Sumter's pitiful guns went off, indicating there were men alive inside and that they were still fighting, when people on the Battery shouted 'three cheers for Major Anderson', it is hardly surprising Northerners were praising his name from New England to Iowa. Words like 'secession' and 'Confederacy' and 'Union' are abstractions. 'Major Anderson' and 'Fort Sumter' gave them meaning. Other men, other battlefields, would soon replace them. But for this moment they symbolized important things to many people - something to fight for." [3]

The sequence of events leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter meant that the Confederates had fired the first shots of the Civil War, and many northerners were outraged by this aggression. The story of Major Anderson and his men bravely defending the fort in an impossible situation captured the public's imagination. In the immediate aftermath, President Lincoln called for 75,000 soldiers to come immediately to fight for the Union cause. By the end of the war, over 2,000,000 soldiers would fight for the Union.

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[1] "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union": https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

[2] Abraham Lincoln, Notice carried by R. S. Chew to Gov. Pickens, April 6, 1861: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:505?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

[3] David Detzer, Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War, p. 283-284