Fort Sumter is trending on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.
The first shots rang out before dawn on April 12, 1861 in Charleston Harbor, after Union forces refused to surrender Fort Sumter to the Confederacy. South Carolina and six southern states had seceded from the Union in the months prior to the battle, and four other states would soon follow.
To mark the sesquicentennial, Fort Sumter beamed two angled lights before dawn to signify the different directions taken by the Union and the Confederacy in a war that would drag on for four years and leave 600,000 soldiers dead.
