Combat· American Civil War
Fort Pickens relief operation
The successful counterpart to the loss of Fort Sumter, a reinforcement that kept a Gulf stronghold in Union hands for the whole war.
While Fort Sumter was being surrendered at Charleston, the government moved to hold Fort Pickens, the work guarding Pensacola harbor that had not fallen with the navy yard in January. On 12 April 1861, the very day the guns opened on Sumter, a relief expedition landed reinforcements, including a body of Marines from the ships' detachments, to secure the fort against the surrounding Confederate forces. The reinforcement succeeded, and Fort Pickens remained a Union enclave on the Confederate Gulf coast through the entire conflict, a standing thorn in the side of the secession and a base for operations against Pensacola. The relief, carried out without a fight, was one of the last acts of the secession crisis and a Union success at the moment Sumter was lost.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 390