Civil War re-enactors raised an American flag at the Fort Sumter National Monument during a ceremony on Tuesday commemorating the 150th anniversary of the symbolic end to the four-year conflict in the place where it began.
A band led dozens of visitors into Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor where an actor portraying Major General Robert Anderson spoke the same words uttered by Anderson on April 14, 1865, when he raised the Union flag again at the fort he had surrendered at the start of the fighting four years earlier.
"It's very emotional," said David Valentine, 57, a re-enactor from Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, who was part of the fife-and-drum corps at the flag raising ceremonies held throughout the day.