Fort Sumter, located in Charleston, South Carolina, was named after General Thomas Sumter. However, the fort is best known as the site where the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter was built after the War of 1812 as one of a series of fortifications on the southern U.S. coast. Construction began in 1829, using slave labor, and the structure was unfinished in 1860, when the conflict began. Seventy thousand tons of granite were imported from New England to build up a sand bar in the entrance to Charleston harbor, which the site dominates. The fort was a five-sided structure (although not a pentagon but more like the home plate used in baseball). It was a brick structure, 170 to 190 feet long, with walls five feet thick, standing 50 feet over the low tide mark. It was designed to house 650 men and 135 guns in three tiers of gun emplacements, although it was never filled near capacity....
When the Civil War ended, Fort Sumter was in ruins and the U.S. Army attempted to restore it as a useful military installation. The damaged walls were releveled to a lower height and partially rebuilt. The third tier of gun emplacements was now gone. Eleven of the original first-tier gun rooms were restored with 100-pounder Parrott rifles.
From 1876 to 1897, Fort Sumter was used only as an unmanned lighthouse station. The start of the Spanish-American War prompted renewed interest in its military use and reconstruction commenced on the facilities that had further eroded over time. A new massive concrete blockhouse-style installation was built in 1898 inside the original walls. Named "Battery Huger" in honor of Revolutionary War General Isaac Huger, it never saw combat.
During World War I, a small garrison manned the two twelve-inch rifles at Battery Huger. Until World War II, the fort was unused except as a tourist destination; two 90-mm antiaircraft guns were then installed. Fort Sumter became a U.S. National Monument in 1948.
Today, administered by the U.S. National Park Service, Fort Sumter is a popular tourist attraction, reached by a thirty-minute boat ride from Charleston.
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