Review - "Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War" by Richard Hatcher

[Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War by Richard W. Hatcher, III (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, 3 maps, photos, diagrams, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,222/250. ISBN:978-1-61121-593-9. $32.95]

Then and now, it is easy to understand why both sides during the American Civil War were willing to expend enormous amounts of effort, blood, and treasure to either hold or gain possession of an increasingly obsolete Third System fort located near the confluence of Charleston harbor's shipping channels. With numerous United States military installations lost to secessionist governments across the Deep South following the presidential election of 1860, a line in the sand was eventually drawn at Fort Sumter, Fort Pickens, and other major properties still in federal hands. Sovereignty-conscious state, and then Confederate, authorities were equally determined to extinguish what they considered a now foreign military presence in their midst. In Charleston harbor, as weeks turned to months of tense demands and negotiations that went nowhere, a clearly indefensible Fort Sumter nevertheless gradually grew in such symbolic importance to the honor and pride of both sides that neither was willing to back down. The stage was set for Sumter to become the flashpoint that ignited civil war.

When Sumter surrendered on April 13, 1861 to Confederate authorities after a sharp bombardment that began on the previous day, Union forces began immediately to plot the fort's recapture along with the rest of the hated "Cradle of Secession." The result, a combination of revenge seeking and the need to close a major enemy deepwater port, was a sea and land operation that spanned nearly the entire length of the war and a series of massive bombardment campaigns that reduced most of the fort to rubble. Yet Confederate-held Sumter never surrendered under the incredible weight of metal thrown at it over an intense eighteen-month period. Instead, it was evacuated in February 1865 along with the city of Charleston itself when rapidly advancing Union forces under General William T. Sherman approached the coast from the South Carolina interior. Though those events comprise the heart of the narrative inside Richard Hatcher's Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War, the entire length of the fort's history is recounted, from initial construction through its present status as a popular focal point of the NPS's Fort Sumter Fort Moultrie National Historical Park.

Hatcher's first chapter summarizes the fort's antebellum construction, which first required creation of an artificial island. It was a long process, and the fort was still unfinished when the war broke out. The following two chapters address a pair of well-worn topics—the months-long Sumter crisis and the April 12-13, 1861 cannonade that forced the fort's surrender. All of that ground is covered efficiently, more detail being arguably unnecessary in light of the exhaustive nature of the existing book and article literature associated with those events. The freshest and brightest shining part of Hatcher's study is its extensive historical account of the 1863-1865 Union heavy artillery bombardment campaign waged against the fort. There seems little doubt that those fine chapters are what will most attract seasoned Civil War readers to the book's content.

Upon seizure of the fort, the Confederate defenders immediately set out to repair the damage, mount more guns, expand living and storage space, and generally improve the man-made island's defenses. All of that respite period is well covered in the book. While federal naval forces remained on blockade station during that time and the army returned in force by 1862, it would take the Charleston harbor operation of 1863 (with its full-scale attempt to capture Morris Island) before Sumter could be comprehensively endangered by land-based heavy batteries. The following roughly eighteen-month period of relentless bombardment of Sumter, a massive expenditure of shot and powder that was continuous (but at its highest intensity came in several discernible waves), is meticulously recounted. Utilizing a host of primary sources as well as the best secondary accounts, Hatcher expertly traces the gradual physical reduction of the fort from a powerful artillery platform to a rubble-strewn infantry and signal corps outpost. Individual views and perspectives of the grinding campaign are presented from all sides, and the narrative offers readers a vivid portrait of what life was like for the defenders, who had to endure intense shelling during daylight hours and attempt to repair as much damage as possible during nighttime. In between those routines there were constant safety, garrison housing, and logistical improvements to be made, and those efforts are also detailed in the text. Given that defender morale never cracked under those many months of bombardment and 'making the rubble dance' in many ways made the island more defensible against direct assault, one wonders if American air power advocates of the 1930s and '40s ever included the Sumter bombardment in their studies.

It would have been nice to have at hand something like 3D-isometric drawings to gain a clearer picture of both the progressive damage wrought by the bombardment and the repairs/improvements made in response, but the book's copious collection of detailed 2D drawings and period photographs does a generally adequate job of providing a strong visual record of the fort's wartime transformation. Additional text and photographs chart the post-Civil War restoration and modernization of the fort, an expensive project that, as Hatcher explains, proceeded in fits and starts and was hindered by regular hurricane damage. After serving through the Spanish-American War and World Wars One and Two, the obsolescent facility was finally retired and in 1948 ownership was formally transferred to the National Park Service.

For those seeking an authoritative overview of the entire length of Fort Sumter's history, with special attention paid to the Civil War period, Richard Hatcher's Thunder in the Harbor is of unmatched quality. Appealing to a wide reading audience, Hatcher's volume skillfully combines engaging popular narrative presentation with enough granular detail of the fort's wartime history to satisfy more demanding tastes. Highly recommended.