Video: 'Ken Burns’ Civil War, ep1 part 2-3' (Anderson moves garrison to Fort Sumter at 28:54)

(Wednesday, December 26, 1860; seven weeks after the 1860 United States presidential election) — Six days after South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, the Federal commander of the Charleston defenses, Maj. Robert Anderson, moved his tiny garrison of fewer than 90 men today from Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to Fort Sumter, situated in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

South Carolina had seceded Dec. 20, 1860, 44 days following Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the presidential election of 1860 on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories.

By February, six more cotton states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas) would follow South Carolina, forming the Confederate States of America.