Fort Sumter

1214 Middle St, Sullivan's Island, SC

Last updated 8/27/2026

Fort Sumter is where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on the Union-held fort in Charleston Harbor, beginning a 34-hour bombardment that ended in the fort's surrender and marked the formal start of four years of war. The fort was built starting in 1829 as part of a coastal defense system protecting Charleston's harbor, constructed on an artificial island made from granite shipped down from New England specifically because the harbor's soft, sandy bottom couldn't support the fort's weight on its own. Fort Sumter changed hands and endured repeated Union bombardment throughout the war, and the fort's physical structure was substantially reduced from its original three-story height by the sustained shelling, leaving the lower, more heavily damaged profile visitors see preserved today rather than the fort's original imposing form. For a Charleston attractions list, Fort Sumter is the essential "where the war actually started" entry — an 1829 harbor defense fort reduced by its own wartime bombardment, still reachable only by the same boat crossing that's marked the site since the National Park Service took it over.

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