Robert Anderson

Major Robert Anderson commanded Fort Sumter when the American Civil War began there, and he was a Kentuckian who had owned slaves. He was an artillery officer of long service - he had fought in the Black Hawk and Mexican wars, and had been Beauregard's artillery instructor at West Point, which is why the man who fired on him had been his student. In December 1860, after South Carolina seceded, he moved his small garrison at night from the indefensible Fort Moultrie to Sumter in the middle of Charleston harbour, which the secessionists treated as an act of war and the North as the first firm thing anyone had done. He held it for four months while Washington argued about whether to resupply him. The bombardment began at half past four on the morning of 12 April 1861 and lasted thirty-four hours; nobody on either side was killed in it, and the only deaths came from an exploding gun during the surrender salute. He carried the fort's flag north and it was used at recruiting rallies. He raised it again over the ruins of Sumter on 14 April 1865, the day Lincoln was shot. He was promoted brigadier general and given command in his native Kentucky, but his health broke within months and he saw no further active service. Four of his family owned enslaved people and he had married into a Georgia family, which makes him one of many southern officers who stayed, and unlike most he was in the one place where the choice was immediately visible. The flag he carried is in the fort's museum.

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