April 1865
On Wednesday, April 12, on the fourth anniversary of the start of the war, with the city of Charleston, South Carolina in Union hands, Maj. Thomas Hugenan, Fort Sumter’s last Confederate commander, simply evacuated the crumbling fort. The symbol of Confederate resistance had survived until the war’s end.
That same day, another of the Confederacy’s major cities, Mobile, Alabama, surrendered to Maj. Gen. Edward S. Canby. Two days later, on Good Friday, April 14, Fort Sumter’s last Federal commander, Brig.