Fort Sumter Flag
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The Fort Sumter Flag is a historic United States flag with a distinctive, diamond-shaped pattern of 33 stars. The flag was lowered by Major Robert Anderson on April 14, 1861 when he surrendered the fort, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, at the outset of the American Civil War.
Anderson brought the flag to New York City 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 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.
The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was the principal orator at the 1865 celebration, and gave a lengthy speech, as was the custom of the day. He said:
"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."
– Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
Coincidentally, later that night President Lincoln would be shot at Ford's Theatre.
The original flag is still on display at Fort Sumter in a museum maintained by the National Park Service. Replicas of the flag are commercially widely available.
