12 April 1861
On this date in 1861…
Knowing that a federal invasion fleet was on the way, General P.G.T. Beauregard ordered Confederate and South Carolina troops to begin the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina.
Other Years:
- 1675 – British Colonial Governor of Virginia, Richard Bennett died.
- 1776 – North Carolina adopted the Halifax Resolution for independence from Great Britain.
- 1836 – A force nearly a thousand Seminole warriors unsuccessfully attacked a blockhouse near the mouth of the Withlacoochee River, held by 50 volunteers from the Florida militia.
- 1862 – “The Great Locomotive Chase,” Andrews’s raid on the Western & Atlantic Rail Road in Georgia disrupted rail service across the state.
- 1862 – Federal troops occupied Fort Pulaski, Georgia.
- 1864 – General Nathan B. Forrest took Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Federal General James R. Chalmers abandoned his troops, but later claimed that Confederate soldiers committed atrocities against his men.
- 1869 – The North Carolina reconstruction legislature passed an anti-Ku Klux Klan Law.
- 1872 – The Jesse James gang was blamed for a $1,500 bank robbery in Columbia, Kentucky that left one man dead.
- 1945 – The 32nd U.S. president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorage at Warm Springs, Georgia at age 63. Vice-President Harry S. Truman of Missouri became president.
Read: Why Know Southern History?
© 2022 KnowSouthernHistory.Org
All Rights Reserved
