The American Civil War kicked off on this day 161 years ago...

I’m fascinated with the history of nations.

When you compare the US becoming a nation in 1776 (and the civil war less than a century later) to what Germany did within a century of becoming a country (WWI & WWII) and England’s history and so on, it’s a worm hole how the globe took shape.

At least current day black folk are appreciative of the sacrifices that were made..........

They should have ignored Sumter. Should have known Lincoln was looking for an excuse to start an invasion.

Who won?

It wasn’t A Civil War as the South just wanted to leave and form a separate nation, not take over. The brit’s are correct it was a war between the states or the war of Northern Aggression as my family refers to it.

The south’s entire plan was to drag it out 4 or 5 years and the North would get tired of it. Kinda worked but basically without England getting involved we were screwed

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The citizens of the nation.

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Nah.

Look at the size and power and of our Federal government today and how it intrudes into our lives at almost every moment. We all lost.

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A set of $30 walkie talkies from Academy and a pack of batteries would have made the South unstoppable.

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Didn’t know electrical outlets existed in the 1860s. Learn something new everyday ig

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Confederate batteries surrounding Charleston Harbor under the command of Brigadier General P.G.T Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter. Major Robert Anderson, the U.S. Army garrison commander, had actually been a professor of Beauregard's at West Point before the war. The Union soldiers would hold out for some 36 hours before finally surrendering the fort on the morning of April 14.

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Let there be no doubt.

Opening fire on Fort Sumter was an illegal act of insurrection.

Fort Sumter was not federal property merely because South Carolina had no right to secede, and therefore, Fort Sumter was still within the authority of the federal government or within the geographical confines of the United States. The federal government's claim to Fort Sumter was not premised merely upon its location within the United States. Similarly, the federal government did not claim ownership of the whole of South Carolina.

Rather, South Carolina had ceded several sites to the federal government in 1805 because South Carolina wanted the locations maintained and/or forts built on those sites but South Carolina did not want to pay the maintenance and construction costs. More specifically, on December 17, 1836, South Carolina officially ceded the Fort Sumter location to the federal government:

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Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory

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Fort Sumter, like Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, was the subject of a specific property interest held by the United States. When the Cuban communist forces took power in Cuba in 1959, they claimed the US occupation of NS Guantanamo Bay to be illegal. Like Fort Sumter, it would be foolhardy to believe that the US government would take a shelling of Gitmo as anything other than an act of war. How do you think this country would react if forces inside of Cuba fired upon Gitmo for 34 hours and then seized it?

South Carolina’s secession on December 24, 1860, through The Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union did not start the Civil War. To the contrary, it was not until April 15, 1861, three days after Fort Sumter was shelled for 34 hours by 43 guns and mortars at Fort Moultrie, Fort Johnson, a floating battery, and Cummings Point, that Lincoln issued Proclamation 80 to peacefully repossess property seized from the Union:

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Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union to the aggregate number of 75,000 in order to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed.

The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department.

I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union and the perpetuity of popular government and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.

And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.

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batteries

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New concept back then but def no AA or AAA