Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode number 36 of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich.

I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. In the last show, we covered the bombardment of Fort Sumpter by the Confederate artillery batteries ringing Charleston Harbor. And then we ended the episode with major Robert Anderson and his men evacuating the battered fort on April 14th, 1861.

Before the firing on Sumpter, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, had held onto a slim hope that there might be a peaceful separation from the rest of the Union. President Abraham Lincoln, who did not believe the South had a right to lead the Union, had wished there might somehow be a peaceful reconciliation with the seceded states.

But once the first shots of the war were fired in Charleston, those hopes and wishes were shattered.

What followed was an appalling bloodletting that lasted four long years and in which over 600,000 soldiers lost their lives. At Antietam, the number of casualties in one day of battle was four times the number of American casualties on the Normandy beaches on D-Day June 6, 1944.

But courage and suffering and dying were not limited to the three million soldiers who put on blue and gray uniforms. During the war, an unknown number of civilians, mostly in the South, would also die from the disruption and devastation brought on by the terrible conflict.

With the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy and the destruction of the society it represented and defended, the Civil War profoundly reshaped the political, social, and economic landscape of the United States.

And so, for better or worse, the bombardment of Fort Sumpter in April 1861 was the opening act in the most dramatic, violent, and significant experience in American history.

When Major Robert Anderson and the Garrison of Fort Sumpter on board the Baltic arrived in New York on April 18th, 1861, they didn't know what kind of reception they would receive. After all, they had just been defeated in the war's first battle.

As the Baltic approached New York Harbor, it was flying Fort Sumpter's giant Garrison flag. The weary men on the steamers decks heard a dull booming and they realized that the batteries along the harbor's mouth were honoring them and their flag with a salute.

Then the men saw thousands of people along the shoreline waving flags and cheering, scores of ships in the harbor joined in, ringing bells or tooting their horns.

Once the Baltic docked, Major Anderson stepped ashore. But before he could leave, the men of the Sumpter Garrison and even the last of the Fort's loyal workmen lined the ship's decks and rent the air with their cheers.

Robert Anderson, with tears streaming down his face, raised his hat to them and then turned and entered the bustling city so that he could find his family.

The Sumpter Garrison didn't have worried about the reception. They were welcomed home as heroes and no none more so than Robert Anderson.

Wherever his carriage went, people on New York sidewalks cheered the hero of Fort Sumpter.

A few days after the Garrison's arrival in the city, there was a patriotic rally held in Union Square and the star of the event was Major Anderson.

Police estimated the crowd at between 150,000 and 250,000. It was definitely the largest gathering in the history of the city.

At the massive rally, Sumpter's smaller storm flag was laid across the arms of George Washington, whose equestrian statue rose above the square,

and the multitude cheered the weathered and faded stars and stripes. But they saved their loudest acclamation for Robert Anderson.

A New Yorker named George Templeton Strong, who would keep one of the worst most famous diaries, wrote that, quote,

the city seems to have gone suddenly wild and crazy. End quote.

But the excitement over Anderson and his men was soon over. Other momentous events quickly captured the public's attention.

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