President Lincoln gets advice on what to do about Fort Sumter and decides to send someone there to assess the garrison’s condition.

Exploring the most important 55 months in American history
President Lincoln gets advice on what to do about Fort Sumter and decides to send someone there to assess the garrison’s condition.
Many of Abraham Lincoln’s advisors recommend abandoning Fort Sumter, but Lincoln considers a different course of action.
Abraham Lincoln begins his first full day as president by receiving an ominous message from Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
South Carolinians want to seize Fort Sumter, but they need the new Confederate government to back them up.
South Carolinians and the Federal garrison in Charleston Harbor settle into an uneasy truce; for how long, nobody knows.
The merchant vessel Star of the West arrives at Charleston Harbor to relieve the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter. But the South Carolinians have other ideas.