One Place Charleston, SC - Fort Sumter

If I could only go to one place in Charleston it would be Fort Sumter.  I am a bit of a Civil War buff.  To me it just seems crazy that less 100 years after this country was established that things became so contentious that a war was necessary to iron out our differences. We were born on the idea that "all men are created equal."  Most of our biggest conflicts in this country have been regarding what defines a "man."  It seems obvious to most of us today, but it wasn't always that way.  It makes me think about how if we were so obviously that blind in the past, what are we blind to today?
Ok, to get back to Fort Sumter.  It was the place where it all started 159 years and 7 days ago.  South Carolina and six other states had already declared secession from the United States. However, there was only a general framework of an army in the south.  The participants in that first bombardment included students from the local war college, The Citadel. The signal to start the bombardment came from some old crazy farmer from Virginia (see picture below), who had wanted to secede from the U.S. for 20 years.  The general in charge on the southern side was P.G.T Bauregard, who had been the star pupil of Major Robert Anderson at West Point - who was in charge of Fort Sumter for the Union side.  Captain Abner Doubleday, who was erroneously declared to be the inventor of baseball 40 years later, fired the first shot for the defense of the fort.
The rag tag nature of this first battle - the professionals with personal relationships - the entrance of people on to the stage who would become famous even into our own time.  This battle had a lot of characteristics that would become themes in the coming war.  What it didn't have were deaths (only a confederate horse was killed) or length (Anderson gave up the fort after 34 hours). It seemed to give many people the false sense that the war would also be bloodless and short.

Websites: National Park Service, Fort Sumter Tours.

Photos:

Edmund Ruffin the Virginia farmer and longtime secessionist, who shot the first shot of the Civil War (from nps.gov)

Fort Sumter today (from wheretraveler.com)

Videos

From American Battlefield Trust

Link to section on Fort Sumter in Ken Burns' documentary