Robert Anderson, Commander and Hero of Fort Sumter, References His Raising the American Flag Over Fort Sumter in Victory on April 14, 1865

This is the only letter we have seen in which Anderson references this emotional event at the war's conclusion.

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Maj. Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, held out against the Confederates as long as he could. However, on April 14, 1861, he surrendered and lowered the American flag from its pole atop the fort. He brought that flag to New York City and displayed it for an April 20, 1861 patriotic...

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Robert Anderson, Commander and Hero of Fort Sumter, References His Raising the American Flag Over Fort Sumter in Victory on April 14, 1865

This is the only letter we have seen in which Anderson references this emotional event at the war's conclusion.

Maj. Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, held out against the Confederates as long as he could. However, on April 14, 1861, he surrendered and lowered the American flag from its pole atop the fort. He brought that flag to New York City and displayed it for an April 20, 1861 patriotic rally, where it was flown from the equestrian statue of George Washington. More than 100,000 people thronged Manhattan's Union Square in what was, by some accounts, the largest public gathering in the country up to that time. The flag was then taken from town to town, city to city throughout the North, where it was frequently "auctioned" to raise funds for the war effort. Any patriotic citizen who won the flag at auction was expected to immediately donate it back to the nation, and it would promptly be taken to the next rally to repeat its fundraising magic. The flag was a widely known and emotion-laden patriotic symbol for the North during the war.

On April 14, 1865, four years to the day after the surrender and as part of a celebration of the Union victory, Anderson (by then a major general) raised the flag in triumph over the battered remains of the fort. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was the principal orator at the celebration, and he gave a speech saying "On this solemn and joyful day, we again lift to the breeze our fathers’ flag, now, again, the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that God would crown it with honor, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children…. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace [and] as long as the sun endures, or the stars, may it wave over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving…. We lift up our banner, and dedicate it to peace, Union, and liberty, now and forevermore."

Much diverted by this task, Anderson had not responded to correspondence received just prior to his leaving for Charleston. Upon his return to New York, he took the opportunity to catch up. Autograph letter signed, New York, April 1865, to Joseph Darlington, a soldier who would go on to become president of the Union league of Philadelphia. "Regretting that your note of March 19 did not reach me until after my return from Fort Sumter, and that I was thus prevented from complying with your request." He signed himself, "Robert Anderson, Maj. Gen. U.S.A." This is the only letter we have seen in which Anderson references his raising the flag on Fort Sumter that April 14th.

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