Georgia governor Joseph Brown, a Baptist, takes immediate action in light of the state’s vote to hold a secession convention.
Sending 134 volunteer Savannah militiamen, under the command of Colonel A. R. Lawton (later, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army), Brown seizes control of Fort Pulaski. The bloodless taking of the fort, located on Cockspur Island upstream of Savannah, was one of the first military actions of the Civil War.
Georgia’s capture of Pulaski was a minor event in the months preceding the formation of the Confederate States of America and the beginning of formal hostilities between the Confederacy and the Union. Union forces would recover Pulaski from the Confederate States in a battle of April 11-12, 1862.
Nevertheless, the seizure of Fort Pulaski was a notable event in the South at that time.
(Photo: Fort Pulaski National Monument, Georgia, by Bruce Gourley)
