I dont want to hijack the Lee thread, but this is a question prompted by it.
It seems pretty straight up that the first ACW shots fired in anger were fired by the South on Ft. Sumter. But some argue that the American control of that fort was in a sense hostile control of Southern territory.
When I visited Ft. Sumter, I learned that not only was it an American fort, it had been built by the US government with fill deposited there by Federal work. In other words there was no way to build a fort there until rock and dirt had been transported to create a fort-viable island. If remember correctly, the fill was even taken from Northern states.
Is that just BS or is it true? I honestly do not know and am just looking for the facts.
Wikipedia says 70,000 tons of rubble were taken from New England to the sandbar in the Charleston harbor to create the fort. I have no reason to believe that’s not true, though it does seem odd there wasn’t a closer source they could have used more easily.
Sumter was in no sense a hostile outpost in southern territory, until radical Southerners chose to make it so.
One could make a similar argument that the federal arsenals seized by rebels around the same time as the attack on Sumter were part of “hostile control” by the federal government, and it would be just as absurd.
After Lincoln won the election, South Carolina seceded, followed by six more states. People seem to like to make a big deal out of the first shots being fired at Fort Sumter, but to be honest, the Civil War was already on by that point. It was just a matter of where the shooting would begin. If it hadn’t been at Fort Sumter it would have been somewhere else.
That’s not as straight up as you think. Secessionists seized federal court houses, post offices, and other facilities all across the South even while Buchanan was still president. Buchanan complained, but he didn’t take any military action in response to the seizures.
The Battle of Fort Sumter wasn’t even the first time that shots were fired related to that fort. Again while Buchanan was still president, a supply ship meant to resupply Fort Sumter (because they had a good sense that war was coming) was fired upon and turned back so that the fort could not be resupplied. This happened months before the actual battle at the fort. The supply ship was turned away in January of 1861. Lincoln took office in April, and the Battle of Fort Sumter also started in April. Many of the seizures of federal properties took place during December of 1860 and more took place during the months between then and the battle at the fort…
I don’t know about the natural resources in that area, but there weren’t any local companies that were able to supply that much granite and other rock. They would have used local rock if they could. It wasn’t available in large enough quantities to be useful.
The shipping cost can be reduced because the same ships may have sailed south empty…
Also the ships would carry rock anyway, as ballast to keep them stable and steering correctly. The weight used to stabilise the ship is called ballast - these days the ships use sea water, but at the time of the sailing ship, they used rock.
… perhaps the authorities even regulated ballast so as to ensure they got good rock, cheap.
Indeed with “Bleeding Kansas” the war did start much earlier.
I do feel that Lincoln wanted a way to justify starting a real war and the resupply of Fort Sumter was a way to give the impression that the south fired first and create a reason for war.