War Comes To Fort Sumter

If you go there now, you can feel the isolation. It takes a moment to edit from your mind the bridges and boats and signs of modernity that dot the island and the landscape across the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina. When you do, though, you feel it -- a tiny little outpost, exposed on three sides by land, and no help to be had in the vicinity. You can play the soundtrack in your head, the bark of cannons across the water, the whistle of shells careening through the air, the explosions and hollow thumps of artillery landing all around, shattering casements, setting buildings on fire. The smell of gunpowder and sweat and smoke wreathes your nostrils. You can feel it -- you are alone, your supplies are limited, and you are cut off from rescue or resupply. You stand behind the battlements on this tiny island, upon which Fort Sumter is built, and you stand in awe as the American flag whips in the breeze, torn and discolored from battle, but ever proud.

That flag can be seen on display at the fort, sealed behind glass, a remnant of that day, the day The Civil War physically began, when the dissolution of the United States into Union and Confederacy was enforced by cannonade and gunfire. That flag would be a rallying point for the Union, and would represent ultimate victory, when raised above the fort at the end of the war. It represents something more, though -- a loss of innocence for a nation conceived in liberty, that it could not simply work out it differences without resorting to violence.

The Bloody Path

The Civil War was many things: a referendum, a reckoning, a revolution, a restoration. The match that lit the fuse to the powder keg was slavery; it was not a new fight, but one that had been simmering since The Revolution. If slavery was the match, the actual powder was the right of States to determine their own destinies, within the confines of the Union. Even after it was over, the shards of the conflict still rained down on the nation, and do so even to this day. The Civil War did not begin in 1861, and it did not end in 1865. The historical events from Fort Sumter to Appomattox are well known; the underlying forces, which continue to this day, are less well understood.