Floridians claim Civil War’s first shot
was at Fort Barrancas, not Fort Sumter

It’s not wise to tell Pensacola residents that the first shot fired in the Civil War was at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

There are some residents of this Florida city who insist the initial shot took place three months prior at Fort Barrancas, a Union fort at what is now Pensacola Naval Air Station.

A raid by Southern sympathizers on Jan. 8, 1861 was reported as an ill-planned and drunken misadventure that resulted in a Union soldier apparently firing a warning shot. According to a spokesman for the Florida Panhandle Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, this was the first time Federal troops fired toward Confederate agitators.

As 1861 dawned, the Union was not in good condition. Abraham Lincoln’s election as president the previous November was considered bad news by southerners. South Carolina had seceded on Dec. 20 and other states were considering such action, including Florida.

Amid the turmoil, some 50 Union troops under the command of Lt. Adam J. Slemmer were encamped at Fort Barrancas. The fort, which features arched brick passageways and tunnels, overlooks the beaches of Pensacola Bay.

On the night of Jan. 8, troops had raised a drawbridge spanning a moat because of growing tensions in the surrounding Naval yard, according to Historian David Ogden. Slemmer’s report, Ogden notes, states that guards heard footsteps outside just after midnight and challenged the intruders, but heard no response. Slemmer made no mention of shots being fired.

However, after the war ended in 1865, one of the would-be intruders mentioned in a letter to Slemmer and later to Slemmer’s widow, that a blank shot had been fired. Confederate R.L. Sweetman, according to Ogden - a Gulf Islands National Seashore ranger – wrote that Slemmer could claim that he commanded the post where the war’s first shot was fired.

The letter sparked the legend that continues and plays into Pensacolans’ belief that their city has been cheated by history.

Fort Barrancas sits on a bluff overlooking the entrance to Pensacola Bay. The natural advantages of the location have inspired engineers of three nations to build forts. The British built a Royal Navy Redoubt of earth and logs in 1763. The Spanish built two forts around 1797. Bateria de San Antonio was a masonry water battery at the foot of the bluff and above it was earth and log Fort San Carlos de Barrancas.

 American engineers remodeled the Water Battery in 1840 and built a masonry fort on the bluff between 1839 and 1844, connected by a tunnel to the Water Battery. This is the current Fort Barrancas. A $1.2 million, 18-month restoration project led to its reopening in 1980.