Naval Station Norfolk. The events leading up to the initial engagement on Virginia soil had moved with whirlwind rapidity. Events leading onto the Battle On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. Four months later, on April 12, 1861, troops of that state opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston's harbor. Five days later, Virginia became the eighth Southern state to withdraw from the Union, and join the newly formed Confederacy. A few weeks later that spring, US General-in-Chief Winfield Scott proposed to President Lincoln a plan to bring the states back into the Union: cut the Confederacy off from the rest of the world instead of attacking its army in Virginia. His plan was to blockade the Confederacy's coastline and control the Mississippi River valley with gunboats. Lincoln ordered a blockade of the southern seaboard from the South Carolina line to the Rio Grande on April 19 and on April 27 extended it to include the North Carolina and Virginia coasts. On April 20, the Union Navy burned and evacuated the Norfolk Navy Yard, destroying nine ships in the process, leaving only Fort Monroe at Old Point Comfort as the last bastion of the United States in Tidewater Virginia. Occupation of Norfolk gave the Confederacy its only major shipyard and thousands of heavy guns, but they held it for only one year. CS Brigadier General Walter Gwynn, who commanded the Confederate defenses around Norfolk, erected batteries at Sewells Point, both to protect Norfolk and to control Hampton Roads. The Union dispatched a fleet to Hampton Roads to enforce the blockade, and on May 18–19 Federal gunboats exchanged fire with the batteries at Sewells Point, resulting in little damage to either side. The Battle Itself Stewart's "History of Norfolk County, Virginia" (1902), contains a detailed account of the Battle of Sewells Point that took place one month later. There were no fatalities on either side. The only person wounded was a Confederate private who was struck by a fragment of a bursting shell. Subsequently, the Sewells Point batteries were under fire many times, but they were never silenced or captured in combat. A long-range rifled Sawyer gun of 24-pounder bore, firing 42-pound projectiles, was mounted at Fort Calhoun and shelled Sewells Point circa August 1861. Later, when Confederate forces evacuated Norfolk on May 10, 1862, the batteries were abandoned. Battle of Hampton Roads