Confederate Bombardment of Fort Sumter Begins Civil War and Triggers Massive War Profiteering Industry

At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries open fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, launching more than 4,000 rounds over 34 hours at the Union garrison commanded by Major Robert Anderson. The fort, which Anderson’s forces had occupied since December 26, 1860, after secretly moving from the more vulnerable Fort Moultrie, controls the entrance to Charleston Harbor and represents federal authority in the heart of secession. President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to resupply the fort with unarmed merchant ships precipitates the crisis—Confederate President Jefferson Davis, after sending a peace commission that Lincoln refuses to receive, issues an ultimatum demanding the fort’s immediate evacuation. Anderson refuses, and Confederate forces commence bombardment. Despite the intensity of the attack, no one dies in direct combat, though a gun explosion during surrender ceremonies on April 14 kills two U.S. soldiers. Anderson surrenders the fort, and the Confederate flag rises over the installation. Lincoln immediately calls for 75,000 volunteers to serve for 90 days to suppress the rebellion, triggering Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee to join the Confederacy.

The attack on Fort Sumter begins a four-year war that kills over 620,000 Americans and simultaneously unleashes an unprecedented wave of war profiteering and corruption. The conflict’s massive scale—requiring armies, weapons, supplies, and infrastructure on a scope never before seen in American history—creates opportunities for contractors, merchants, and corrupt officials to extract enormous profits from both government treasuries and human suffering. Within months, the “shoddy” scandal emerges as contractors sell the Union Army defective goods: boots made from cardboard, clothing from dry-rotted cloth, blind and diseased horses, rotten ship hulls painted to look new, and even bullets filled with sawdust instead of gunpowder. It is later determined that fully one-quarter of government war spending is lost to fraud. In the first year alone, $50 million goes to soldiers’ sustenance and another $50 million to quartermaster supplies where much corruption occurs; by war’s end, these figures reach $369 million and $678 million respectively. The term “shoddy millionaires” enters the American lexicon to describe war profiteers who prioritize profit over soldiers’ lives and the war effort.

The war creates a corrupt ecosystem that exemplifies kakistocracy at multiple levels. Lincoln’s first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, will be forced to resign in early 1862 after corruption charges relating to war contracts—he fails to keep adequate records, relies on unaccountable special agents to award contracts worth millions, and allows massive waste and fraud. The cotton trade between Union-occupied territory and Confederate states becomes a cesspool of corruption involving Treasury Department officials, military officers, and politically connected traders who make spectacular profits (purchasing cotton for 12-20 cents per pound and selling it in New York for up to $1.89) while prolonging the war by providing the Confederacy with hard currency and supplies. The bombardment of Fort Sumter thus initiates not just a military conflict but an era of systemic corruption that enriches profiteers while undermining the Union cause, eventually forcing Congress to pass the False Claims Act in 1863 to combat contractor fraud. The war demonstrates how national crises create opportunities for the unscrupulous to exploit governmental expansion and weakened oversight for personal enrichment.