Fort Sumter - First Shots Fired 147 Years Ago Today
At 4:30 AM, sparking the Civil War.
Labels: Civil War, Fort Sumter
posted by El Rider at 6:10 PM
Saturday, April 12, 2008
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3 Comments:
Great post! A few years ago I went to Ft. Moultrie and Ft. Sumpter and I was shocked to come up with the conclusion that the beginning of that war seemed to be a completely unnecessary exchange fueled by hot-heads on both sides looking for war. I may be among the few who really believe that the problems faced between North and South could have been solved by peaceful means.
The acrimony stirred up by the war still has not ended. Slavery--which existed in New England, and particularly in New York, had been sucessfully ended without bloodshed just a few years before. At the time that Ft. Sumter was fired upon, already there were a number of proposals in the hopper for ending slavery peacefully. While this may have taken maybe half a dozen years longer to implement, we could have avoided the destruction of the South, the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and the legacy of distrust. Then again, hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?
Oh yes, how many times did South Carolina secede from the US before the event that triggered the abandonment of Ft. Moultrie? Wasn't it something like half-a-dozen?
I almost missed putting up the post, I put the date in my then new phone months ago and didn't happen to look at the calendar until late in the day. Thanks for the comments, it'll give me something to ponder as I head down into the heart of Dixie (Mobile) next week.
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