Robert Anderson (June 14, 1805 – October 26, 1871) was a United States Army officer during the American Civil War. He was the Union commander in the first battle of the American Civil War at Fort Sumter in April 1861 when the Confederates bombarded the fort and forced its surrender, starting the war. Anderson was celebrated as a hero in the North and promoted to brigadier general and given command of Union forces in Kentucky. He was removed late in 1861 and reassigned to Rhode Island, before retiring from military service in 1863. In 1865, he returned to Fort Sumter to again raise the American flag that he had lowered during the 1861 surrender.
Anderson was born at "Soldier's Retreat," the Anderson family estate near Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Richard Clough Anderson Sr. (1750–1826) was of Scots-Irish ancestry from Antrim, Northern Ireland. He served in the Continental Army as an aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolutionary War. He was a charter member of the Society of the Cincinnati. Anderson's mother, Sarah Marshall (1779–1854), was a cousin of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States.
Anderson graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1825, and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Regiment of Artillery.
A few months after graduation, he became a private secretary to his older brother Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., who was serving as the US Minister to Gran Colombia. He served in the Black Hawk War of 1832 as a colonel of Illinois volunteers, where he had the distinction of twice mustering Abraham Lincoln in and once out of army service. He also was in charge of transporting Black Hawk to Jefferson Barracks after his capture, assisted by Jefferson Davis.
Returning to regular Army service as a first lieutenant in 1833, he served in the Second Seminole War as an assistant adjutant general on the staff of Winfield Scott, and was promoted to captain in October 1841.
Anderson was the author of Instruction for Field Artillery, Horse and Foot, published in 1839.
In the Mexican–American War in 1847, he participated in the Siege of Veracruz (March 9–29), the Battle of Cerro Gordo (April 17–18), the Skirmish of Amazoque, (May 14), and the Battle of Molino del Rey (September 8), during which he was severely wounded while assaulting enemy fortifications, for which he received a brevet promotion to major.
Due to his wounds, Anderson was on sick leave during 1847–48. He was then in garrison at Fort Preble, Maine, from 1848 to 1849. He served from 1849 to 1851 as a member of the Board of Officers to devise "A Complete System of Instruction for Siege, Garrison, Seacoast, and Mountain Artillery," which was adopted on May 10, 1851. He then returned to garrison duty at Fort Preble from 1850 to 1853.
From 1855 to 1859, in view of his precarious health and probably also due to his connections to General Winfield Scott, Anderson was assigned to the light duty of inspecting the iron beams produced in a mill in Trenton, New Jersey for Federal construction projects. He eventually received a permanent promotion to major of the 1st Regiment of Artillery in the Regular Army on October 5, 1857.
While residing in Trenton, Anderson became a Freemason, and was a member of Mercer Lodge No. 50
In November 1860, Anderson was assigned to command of U.S. forces in and around Charleston, South Carolina, replacing Colonel John L. Gardner. With South Carolina headed for secession in December 1860, Gardner, feeling that the small garrison at Fort Moultrie was under-armed, had attempted to draw arms and ammunition from the Federal arsenal in the city, but was prevented from doing so by a crowd of civilians. His attempt sparked local protests, and Secretary of the Army John B. Floyd decided that Gardner, a Massachusetts native, should be replaced by a Southerner. Anderson, a former slave owner from Kentucky and generally sympathetic to the South, was selected.
Anderson moved the garrison from Fort Moultrie, which was indefensible, to the more modern and more defensible Fort Sumter, in the middle of Charleston Harbor, an action which caused great consternation in South Carolina, which responded by taking Fort Moultrie and the other Federal assets in the harbor and the city. In the immediate aftermath of Anderson's move, President James Buchanan and War Secretary Floyd claimed that Anderson had gone against orders, until an examination of War Department files showed that he had acted within the discretion he had been given.
In February 1861, the Confederate States of America was formed and took command of the campaign against Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered that the fort should be taken. The artillery attack was commanded by Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard, who had been Anderson's student at West Point. The attack began on April 12, 1861, and continued until Anderson, badly outnumbered and outgunned, surrendered the fort on April 13. The battle began the American Civil War. No one was killed in the battle on either side, but one Union soldier was killed, and another was mortally wounded during a 50-gun salute to the flag just before the fort was surrendered.
Anderson's actions in defense of Fort Sumter made him an immediate national hero. He was promoted to brigadier general in the Regular Army, effective May 15. Anderson took the fort's 33-star flag with him to New York City, where he participated in a Union Square patriotic rally that was, at the time, the largest public gathering in North America.
Symbolism of the American flag
The modern meaning of the American flag, according to Harold Holzer in 2007 and Adam Goodheart in 2011, was forged by Anderson's stand at Fort Sumter. Holzer states that New York City:
responded with a "feast of the American flag." Eyewitnesses estimated that as many as 100,000 flags were quickly displayed across the city. To punctuate this feast of national colors, New York's graphic artists rushed out patriotic engravings and lithographs depicting avenging soldiers or gowned goddesses, bayonets upthrust, carrying "The Flag of Our Union" into future battles that, at the time, could only be imagined. Composers dedicated songs like "Our Country's Flag" to President Lincoln, and adorned their published sheet music with colorful images of resolute soldiers gripping the national banner.
During the war, the flag was used throughout the North to symbolize American nationalism and to reject secessionism. Goodheart explained that the flag was transformed into a sacred symbol of patriotism: