Fort Sumter Flag

When the main flagpole was felled by a shot during the bombardment of Fort Sumter by Confederate forces, Peter Hart rushed to retrieve the flag and remount it on a makeshift pole.

The flag was lowered by Major Robert Anderson on April 13, 1861, when he surrendered Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, at the outset of the American Civil War.

On April 14, 1865, four years and one day after the surrender and as part of a celebration of the Union victory, Anderson (by then a retired and sickly major general), raised the flag in triumph over the battered remains of the fort.

He said in conclusion: "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....

[4] After her death in 1905, her daughters fulfilled a direction in her will that the Sumter flags "be given back to the country, their proper custodian, when I am no more" when they presented them to then Secretary of War William Howard Taft.