Fort Sumter
From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia
History
South Carolina had ceded property in Charleston Harbor to the federal Government in 1805, upon the condition that "the United States... repair the fortifications now existing thereon or build such other forts or fortifications as may be deemed most expedient by the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a garrison or garrisons therein" (The Statutes at Large of South Carolina [Columbia, South Carolina: A.S. Johnston, 1836], Volume V, page 501). Work on Fort Sumter had begun in 1829 and had still not been completed by 1860. Unfinished and unoccupied for over thirty years, the terms of the cession were clearly violated and it was thus "void and of no effect." Consequently, the fort was never the property of the United States Government, as Lincoln claimed in his first Inaugural Address, and, upon secession from the Union, the only duty which South Carolina owed, either legally or morally, to the other States was "adequate compensation... for the value of the works and for any other advantage obtained by the one party, or loss incurred by the other" (Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, page 211). Such being the case, the occupation of Fort Sumter by U.S. troops was technically an act of invasion and the Confederate forces in Charleston were wholly justified in firing upon them.
