3-4.4

It Is Essential For Students to Know:

• It Is Essential For sStudents To Know about significant events leading up to the Civil War and events occurring during the course of the Civil War in South Carolina.
• As a result of the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States[November 1860], a Secession Convention was held in Columbia, then moved to Charleston [December, 1860].
• Almost all members of the convention voted to secede, or no longer be part of the United States. They signed the Ordinances of Secession. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, even before Lincoln was sworn in as president.
• Soon other states joined South Carolina and formed a new country, the ConfederateStates of America. They wrote a constitution and elected a president, Jefferson Davis. [January, 1861]
• The Confederacy began to form an army and to take over forts and other property located in the South that belonged to the national government.
• The Confederate government ordered the Union soldiers to leave Fort Sumter, located in Charleston harbor.
• The United States army refused to obey the orders of the Confederate States of America. President Lincoln would not recognize the Confederate split from the Union and sent supplies to the federal troops at Fort Sumter.
• Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter before the supply ships could arrive. The bombardment continued until the Union troops surrendered.
• Federal troops were allowed to leave peacefully but the Civil War had begun.
• President Lincoln and the Union army prepared for war. So did the Confederate States of America.
• South Carolina depended on the export of cotton in exchange for imports of much needed war supplies from Europe so the United States Navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The Union blockade brought great hardship to the people of South Carolina because they could not get needed food and supplies.
• Determined to break the blockade, the Confederacy developed the first submarines near the end of the war. The Confederate ship, The Hunley, was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship. However, The Hunley itself sank and was not effective in breaking the Union blockade of the port of Charleston.
• Most of the fighting in the Civil War took place outside of South Carolina. However, the war came to the state when the Union forces took over Port Royal near Hilton Head and tried to take Charleston for over a year.
• Towards the end of the war, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led his troops across Georgia and South Carolina in an effort to split the Confederacy and finally bring an end to the war by using the tactic of total war. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia left behind a trail of destruction of burned and looted farms and plantations. Sherman continued the march through South Carolina from Savannah to Columbia.
• The city of Columbia burned and Sherman’s troops headed north to the North Carolina border. The purpose of Sherman’s march was to destroy available supplies and anything important to the economy in an effort to end the war and to convince the civilian population to end the war.
• Students need to understand the geography of the region and be able to use maps to gather information and understand concepts such as the significance of the location of Fort Sumter, the blockade of Charleston and route of Sherman’s march.

It Is Not Essential For Students to Know:

• It is not essential for students to know that the Secession Convention was moved to Charleston because of an outbreak of smallpox.
• Students do not need to remember specific battles and dates or events that did not take place in South Carolina. However, understanding some of the war strategy, such as the effort of the Union forces to split the Confederacy at the Mississippi and the attacks of both sides on their respective capitals will help students understand why there was not much fighting in South Carolina.
• Students do not need to know the names of military leaders, except for Sherman.
• Students do not need to understand how The Hunley worked or the circumstances of its retrieval.
• Students do not need to know about blockade runners, about the Port Royal experiment or about the siege of Charleston by land and the attack on Fort Wagner led by the 54th Massachusetts African American unit.