Chapter 3 South Carolina: The Better Half of the World Summary and Analysis

Chapter 3 opens as Horwitz approached Fort Sumter by boat. The fort, now a national park, was three miles off the shore of Charleston North Carolina. Fort Sumter was a Union stronghold that was attacked by Confederate gun batteries on the shore in April 1861. Unions soldiers fired back, but the fort caught fire and they surrendered. No soldiers were killed in the battle.

On the boat to the fort, Horwtiz met a man named Joel Dorfman, an unemployed truck driver from New York. Dorfman himself was on a tour of Civil War sites, but had chosen to do them in reverse order as Horwitz, beginning at the site of Lee's surrender. He was about to finish his tour at the beginning of the war. He told...