On Sun­day, April 14, the day des­ig­nat­ed for the evac­u­a­tion of Fort Sumter, the atmos­phere was warm and sun­ny. Black smoke ascend­ed from the fort as Edmund Ruf­fin and the Pal­met­to Guard board­ed a steam­er, join­ing a crowd of spec­ta­tors excit­ed for the depar­ture of Major Ander­son and his gar­ri­son. Though antic­i­pat­ed to occur by 9 a.m., the evac­u­a­tion faced sev­er­al delays that stretched into the after­noon. Major Ander­son board­ed the Cataw­ba to begin the trans­fer process to the Isabel, which would sub­se­quent­ly take the men to the wait­ing Baltic. When ques­tioned about a can­non salute to mark the occa­sion, Ander­son revealed his emo­tion­al strain, stat­ing, “No, it is one hun­dred, and those are scarce­ly enough,” before suc­cumb­ing to tears.

As they wait­ed, Ruf­fin record­ed shared sto­ries of their expe­ri­ences dur­ing the siege, not­ing that the fort had sur­vived with­out sig­nif­i­cant dam­age despite the can­non fire’s inten­si­ty. It was near­ly three o’clock when the first of the antic­i­pat­ed hun­dred can­non reports echoed, mark­ing the end of Ander­son­’s time at Sumter. Amidst the smoke, a sense of calm enveloped the area.

Dur­ing prepa­ra­tions at 2 p.m., Cap­tain Dou­ble­day mus­tered the men. They lined up, while the guns that Ander­son had pre­vi­ous­ly ordered to remain silent were pre­pared to fire in salute as the fort’s flag was low­ered. Trag­i­cal­ly, as the salute com­menced, a mis­fire occurred, result­ing in the imme­di­ate death of a sol­dier named Pri­vate Daniel Hough. The chaot­ic moment neces­si­tat­ed a pause in the salute, allow­ing time for Hough’s bur­ial, an event char­ac­ter­ized by solemn respect from both Con­fed­er­ate and Union sol­diers.

With somber cer­e­monies con­clud­ing, the salute resumed, albeit reduced to fifty rounds. By 4 p.m., Ander­son led his men out amidst the music of “Yan­kee Doo­dle” and sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to the Isabel. As night fell, the men remained in the har­bor, wit­ness­ing cel­e­bra­to­ry fire­works from Charleston, where a jubi­lant crowd rev­eled in the day’s events.

While some per­ceived the day’s occur­rences as a poten­tial ground­work for peace, promi­nent fig­ures with­in the Con­fed­er­ate lead­er­ship viewed it as a sig­nif­i­cant moment of South­ern resilience, hav­ing seized a pow­er­ful fort from the Union with­out casu­al­ties amidst the bom­bard­ment. The irony lay in the fact that an intense dis­play of can­non fire, with thou­sands of shells exchanged, had result­ed in no deaths, yet it would her­ald a war that claimed more Amer­i­can lives than any pre­vi­ous con­flict.