so south carolina militia units, should they want to attack the u.s. army, are going to have to cross a mile of water first. right now we are standing outside of the sally port or the entrance to fort sumter, and what we are standing on is the granite wharf. and this is where anderson's men would have landed on the night of december 26, 1860. >> for more than three months, anderson and his men peaceably held the fort. then on april 12th, the confederate general beauregard gave the command to open fire. >> this is one of the weapons the rebs would have used to bomb the fort. so this is a 10-inch mortar, which is a small cannon, it's usually used -- it has a high trajectories so it can be used to shoot over the walls of a fortification like fort sumter and this is the same type of model that would have fired the first shot of the civil war. so we're standing inside of a casemate here at fort sumter. a casemate is a gun room so it just would just have one gun inside of it as you can see here today we do have one gun inside of this casemate. this is a 42-p