The Civil War: From Fort Sumter to the Turning Point

Confederate artillery bombarded the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, on April 12-13, 1861, after President Lincoln announced he would resupply the fort with food but not arms, deliberately placing responsibility for the first shots on the Confederacy; the attack triggered a wave of Unionist sentiment in the North and pushed four Upper South states, including Virginia, to join the Confederacy rather than supply troops against fellow Southerners. The Union entered the war with overwhelming structural advantages: roughly 22 million free people against the Confederacy's 5.5 million, about 90 percent of American industrial capacity, and a rail network more than twice the length of the Confederacy's, though the Confederacy could initially draw on a disproportionate share of experienced officers and a culture accustomed to horsemanship and arms.