On Sunday, April 14, Major Anderson and his garrison marched out of the fort with drums beating and colors flying and boarded ship to join the Federal fleet off the bar. On the 50th round of what was to have been a 100-gun salute to the United States flag, there occurred the only fatality of the engagement. The premature discharge of a gun and the explosion of a pile of cartridges resulted in the death of Pvt. Daniel Hough. Another man, mortally wounded, died several days later. The 50th round was the last. Now, as the steamer _Isabel_ went down the channel, the soldiers of the Confederate batteries on Cummings Point lined the beach, silent, heads uncovered. The following day, April 15, 1861, Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 militia. Civil war, so long dreaded, had begun. The States of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina now joined the Confederacy. _Charleston and the Federal Blockade—1861-63_ With Fort Sumter in Confederate hands, the port of Charleston became a most irritating loophole in the Federal naval blockade of the Atlantic coast—doubly irritating because at Charleston “rebellion first lighted the flame of civil war.” As late as January 1863, it was reported that “vessels ply to and from Charleston and Nassau [Bahamas] with the certainty and promptness of a regular line.” In 2 months of the spring following, 21 Confederate vessels cleared Charleston and 15 came in. Into Charleston came needed war supplies; out went cotton in payment. Capture of Port Royal Harbor on November 7, 1861, by a Federal fleet under Capt. Samuel F. Du Pont, however, had made possible land and sea operations against Charleston. In June 1862, an attempt was made by Maj. Gen. D. H. Hunter to push through to Charleston by James Island on the south. This ended in Union disaster at Secessionville. Meanwhile, the _Monitor-Merrimac_ action in Hampton Roads had indicated the feasibility of a naval “ironclad” expedition against Fort Sumter, the key to the harbor. Sumter, now largely rebuilt, had become a formidable work armed with some 95 guns and garrisoned with upwards of 500 men. In May 1862, the Navy Department had determined to capture Charleston “as soon as Richmond falls.” To Du Pont, who was now rear admiral, there seemed to be a “morbid appetite in the land to have Charleston.” The War Department, meanwhile, far from supplying additional troops to General Hunter’s command in South Carolina, withdrew units to reenforce General McClellan in Virginia. _Federal Ironclads Attack Fort Sumter_