Fort Sumter, 1861

At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, a mortar shell rose from Fort Johnson, burst over Fort Sumter, and the war began. The fort stood in the mouth of Charleston harbor, held by Major Robert Anderson and about eighty-five men. Around it were Confederate batteries under General P. G. T. Beauregard, who had studied artillery under Anderson at West Point.

The bombardment lasted thirty-four hours. Sumter's guns answered slowly, the garrison too small to man them all. By the second day the barracks were burning and the magazine had to be sealed against the fire. Anderson agreed to evacuate on the afternoon of April 13.

Not one man was killed by the shelling. The first death of the war came the next day, when a gun burst during the salute Anderson fired to his flag as he left.

The composition is a fan. Seven or eight guns along the shore battery fire at once, and their smoke trails converge across the still water on the dark block of the fort in the middle distance. Shells burst high above it like flowers. The men at the pieces are small, busy silhouettes.

What holds the eye is how calm it looks. The harbor is flat, the sun a pale disc behind haze, the whole scene in grays and silvers — except the fort, where orange fire has started to show.