THE FALL OF ATLANTA 2 SEPTEMBER 1864 – PART TWO Alarmed by the election of President Lincoln, on 20 December 1860 the state government of South Carolina announced that it was leaving the Union. Here was the major question: was the Union indivisible, or could states volunteer to leave it (as, after all, they had volunteered to join it). In January 1861 Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana followed suit with Texas leaving on 1 February. Beginning on 4 February delegates from all the secessionist states met and agreed to form the Confederate States of America, with a constitution which differed little from that of the USA, except that it entrenched slavery, and elected a President, Jefferson Davis, with the Confederate capital in Montgomery, Alabama, later moved to Richmond in Virginia. Davis was born in Kentucky
Many of the forts in the pre- and early war period were in fact practically unmanned and if I remember correctly Fort Sumter was only one of several forts around Charleston Harbor. What Anderson did was to gather up all of the available manpower and concentrate in Fort Sumter as being the most defensible - a movement possible in the confusions that surrounded this quiet tense moment before actual war erupted.
Nice, succinct description of the early days of the War Between the States. One quibble: did you reverse the names of the armies? Wasn’t the Army of the Potomac the name of McDowell’s force? It certainly was the name for the Union Army later in the War? Union armies were always named after rivers.
Many of the forts in the pre- and early war period were in fact practically unmanned and if I remember correctly Fort Sumter was only one of several forts around Charleston Harbor. What Anderson did was to gather up all of the available manpower and concentrate in Fort Sumter as being the most defensible - a movement possible in the confusions that surrounded this quiet tense moment before actual war erupted.
Nice, succinct description of the early days of the War Between the States. One quibble: did you reverse the names of the armies? Wasn’t the Army of the Potomac the name of McDowell’s force? It certainly was the name for the Union Army later in the War? Union armies were always named after rivers.