During our guided tour of Fort Sumter with the National Park Service, we discovered an original Civil War artillery shell still embedded in the fort’s brick wall. This powerful visual reminder ...

A look at what happened April 7-12, 1861, before the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The shots fired spurred the start of the Civil War.

Here’s what happened in April 1861, leading up to the firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, which spurred the launch of the American Civil War.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the start of the Civil War, the National Archives unveiled nearly 3,000 documents and records Whitman transcribed while working ...