On April 11, 1861, Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard delivered an ultimatum to Union Major Robert Anderson, commander of the besieged Fort Sumter, demanding immediate evacuation. Anderson refused, citing orders and dwindling supplies. Hours of tense negotiation followed before Beauregard's guns opened fire at 4:30 the next morning, igniting the American Civil War.
By April 1861, Fort Sumter sat like a lonely island of federal authority in the middle of secessionist South Carolina. Major Robert Anderson and his garrison of roughly 85 men had been cut off from resupply for months, watching Confederate batteries multiply along the harbor's edge.
On the afternoon of April 11, three aides to General Beauregard rowed out under a white flag and presented Anderson with formal terms: evacuate now, and the Confederacy would let his men leave with flags and honors intact. Anderson, a former artillery instructor who had once taught Beauregard at West Point, agonized before declining, though he hinted he might be starved out within days anyway.
That small courtesy — old teacher facing old student across cannon fire — did nothing to stop the machinery of war. Beauregard, unwilling to wait, ordered the bombardment to begin at 4:30 a.m. on April 12. The war that followed would kill more Americans than any conflict before or since.