Fort Sumter's first Civil War shot wasn't Edmund Ruffin's

The American Civil War began at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, when a Confederate signal mortar at Fort Johnson burst a shell over Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina — fired not by the man most often named, but by Lieutenant Henry S. Farley.

The legend gives the first shot to Edmund Ruffin, a 67-year-old Virginia secessionist long credited with it. In fact Captain George S. James ordered Farley to pull the lanyard on the 10-inch mortar as the signal for every battery in the harbour. Ruffin, serving with the Palmetto Guard on Morris Island, fired after it; his distinction is that his was the first shot to strike the brick fort.

The contest was lopsided. About 6,000 Confederate troops ringed the harbour, while Major Robert Anderson’s garrison had more than four dozen usable guns but men enough to work only a few. He counted just 700 cartridges and set six soldiers to sewing more from blankets and spare uniforms. The crisis had begun with Lincoln’s election in 1860. The days ran like this:

• April 11: Beauregard’s aides demand evacuation. Anderson refuses, remarking that hunger will force him out within days anyway.
• April 12: The aides leave at 3:20 a.m. with a one-hour warning; the signal shell goes up at 4:30. Anderson keeps his men off the exposed upper tier, where his biggest guns stand.
• April 13: Hot shot from Fort Moultrie sets the barracks ablaze, the flagstaff is shot down, and firing stops at about 1:30 p.m. as terms are agreed.
• April 14: During Anderson’s salute to his flag, a spark ignites a cartridge, killing Private Daniel Hough and fatally injuring Private Edward Gallway — the only deaths of the whole affair. The salute is cut from 100 guns to 50.
• April 15: Lincoln’s Proclamation 80 calls for 75,000 militia; within two months four more states leave the Union.

“Having defended Fort Sumter for thirty-four hours, until the quarters were entirely burned … I accepted terms of evacuation.” — Major Robert Anderson, report to Washington

The war it started ended four years later at Appomattox.