At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861 after orders to fire had been telegraphed from downtown Montgomery, the capital of the newly formed Confederate States of America, Ford Sumter in Charleston, S.C. was  bombarded by artillery batteries surrounding the harbor. Although the Union garrison returned fire, they were significantly outgunned and, after 34 hours, agreed to evacuate. There was no loss of life on either side as a direct result of this engagement, although a gun explosion during the surrender ceremonies on April 14 caused the death of two Union soldiers.

Historian David Von Drehle, writing in Time magazine this week, tells us the war actually started in Kansas in 1856. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act proposed to let territorial settlers decide the future of slavery. What followed was a race to the prairie and Kansas, where the two sides clashed. Then on May 21, 1856, a proslavery army, commanded by U.S. Sen. David Rice Atchison of Missouri, hauled in artillery and destroyed the antislavery forces in Lawrence, Kansas. “Boys, this is the happiest day of my life,” Atchison declared as he told his forces to be prepared to teach “the damned abolitionists a Southern lesson that they will remember until the day they die.”

 From Kansas, the remaining steps to Fort Sumter seemed to follow in sequence. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, tried to answer the question in favor of slave-holders. The backlash was furious. In Kansas, settlers passed competing constitutions, one slave and one free, and the battle over which one Congress should accept splintered the Democratic Party. When Stephen A. Douglas failed to reunite the Democrats in 1860, he opened the door to a Lincoln victory.

At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and some experts say the figure may have reached 700,000. Of the Union’s 2.5 million soldiers there were 110,070 battle deaths and 250,152 who died from wounds or disease. Of the Confederate side’s approximately 1.2 million men there were 94,000 battle deaths and 164,000 who died from wounds or disease. These casualty numbers exceed the nation’s loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Iraq.

Thomas L. Livermore, one of the leading authorities on casualties of the war, has studied 48 of the war’s battles and concluded the following: Of every 1,000 Federals in battle, 112 were wounded. Of every 1,000 Confederates, 150 were wounded. Mortality, however, was greater among the Confederate wounded because of inferior medical service.

While doing some ancestry research last week, I found that two of my great-great uncles, Joel C. Archer and George Archer, both from the western part of the state, were wounded and collected, at least for a brief time a Civil War pension from the State of Alabama. Records show that my great-grandfather, William John Martin of Marion County, who served with the 26th Alabama Regiment for four years, never filed for a pension.

The 150th Anniversary of the Civil War is an excellent time to work on family histories. The computer has made it so much easier, and there are great sites such as Ancestry.com (paid) and Rootsweb.com (free) which, with only a few facts, such as name, date or place of birth or date and place of death, will direct viewers to volumes of information. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is a great place to search for Alabamians because of the many Land Patents for the sale of Indian Lands that were issued here. I have found multiple parcels of these lands purchased by my ancestors.

The sesquicentennial of the war has also resurrected the debate about the issues that prompted the war. I wrote several weeks ago that while slavery is, without question, the leading issue of the conflict, there are others including the economic oppression of the South by the northern industrial complex.

I wrote previously that to my knowledge none of my ancestors who served ever owned a slave. I wrote that in order to say that I felt there were other issues such as supporting their new government that might have played a significant role. Also, after 1862 all Confederate white males from age 21 to 50 were required to serve.

I have since found numbers compiled from the 1860 Census which show that of a total population of 5,447,220 in the 11 Confederate states, there were only 316,632 individuals who owned a slave. That’s 5.8 percent. If the number of households is used instead of individuals, it’s 30 percent.

And by-the-way, in this column I reference this truly uncivil war by the name used in the official observance. My preferred name remains “War Between the States.”

Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com.