On December 20, 1860, South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession: "A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of president of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery." Citadel Cadet George Haynsworth dutifully pulled the lanyard, sending the first secessionist shot of the coming war, from Morris Island , on January 9, 1860. Cannons fired from Charleston 's Battery Park pounded Fort Sumter in the harbor, trying to keep Union ships from reaching safety. Live oaks shade the cannons today, still poised as they were in 1860.