Charleston Harbor—Could Sumter have been Stormed—Negroes and Poor
Whites.
We steamed into Charleston Harbor early in the morning; and one by one,
Sumter, Moultrie, Pinkney, and at last the City of Desolation itself
rose from the smooth expanse of water, as the masts of ships rise from
the ocean when you approach them. Where, four years ago, before the
fatal attack on this now shapeless heap of sand and mortar, the flags of
all nations fluttered, and the wharves were crowded with a commerce that
successfully rivaled Savannah, Mobile and every other Southern city save
New Orleans, and even aspired to compete with New York in the Southern
markets, only transports and Quartermasters’ vessels were now to be
seen, with here and there a passenger steamer, plying to and from New
York for the accommodation of Yankee officers and their wives! The
harbor itself was dotted with insignificant-looking iron clads, mingled
with an occasional old ship of the line, and, in ampler supply, the
modern “Yankee gunboats,” of the double-ender type, which formed so
potent a cause for alarm in the councils of the privates in the Rebel
armies.
The elegant residences along the battery front retained the aristocratic
seclusion of their embowering shrubbery, creepers and flowering plants;
but even through these gracious concealments which Nature cast over
them, the scars from the Swamp Angel could everywhere be seen. Pavements
had been torn up from the principal business streets, to build the
batteries that lined the shore; and great embankments, crowned with
Tredegar guns, shut out the prospect from many an aristocratic window.
The unfinished Custom House was among the most conspicuous buildings,
the white marble blocks lying scattered about it, as they were left by
the workmen four years ago. “We’ll never finish it,” the fervid
revolutionists said, as they began the war. “We’ve paid Yankee tariffs
long enough; now, hurrah for free trade with our friends of France and
Great Britain!” But the Custom House stands, and next winter Mr.
Fessenden will be reporting to the Senate an item in the military
appropriation bill for its completion.
Admiral Dahlgren and Fleet Captain Bradford came alongside in the
Admiral’s gig, soon after our arrival; and while our boatswain was
piping his whistle as the Admiral came over the ship’s side, the guns of
the “Pawnee” began a salute for the Chief Justice. The Treasury Agent
and some other officials soon followed, and the Admiral took the party
under his charge, transferred us to a comfortable and speedy little
harbor steamer, and started toward that first goal of every man’s
curiosity—Sumter.
The rebellion has left its marks on the pale, thoughtful features of the
Admiral, not less than upon the harbor he has been assailing. The
terrible death of noble young Ulric Dahlgren, a martyr to the barbarism
of slavery, might well grave deep traces on a father’s face; but the
climate here, and the labors of the past have also been very trying, and
one can readily believe, what used to be rather sarcastically urged by
the Admiral’s enemies, that his health did not permit him to keep up in
gunnery with General Gillmore.
We passed a little sailing vessel manned by blacks. The Admiral told us
that they had brought it down one of the rivers, the other day, and he
had allowed them to keep it. They earn a livelihood bringing wood to the
city. Recently there have been a number of outrages perpetrated on the
blacks inland, by their late masters and some of the returning Rebel
soldiers. Greatly infuriated, the blacks came to him begging for arms.
“I have never before doubted their orderly disposition,” he said, “and I
am not sure that anybody would remain orderly under those
circumstances.”
The Charleston city negroes were represented as unexpectedly
intelligent. “Out of two hundred and seventy-four laborers at work on
the streets,” said one of the city officials who had joined us, “one
hundred and seventy-four are negroes—the rest whites. Of the negroes,
over a hundred (or over four-sevenths) can read, while scarcely
one-seventh of the whites have made the same advancement!”[11] Captain
Bradford gave a significant illustration of the progress of some ideas
among the less intelligent negroes of the country. They had again and
again asked him, he said, what good it did them to make them free,
unless they were to own the land on which they had been working, and
which they had made productive and valuable. “Gib us our own land and we
take care ourselves; but widout land, de ole massas can hire us or
starve us, as dey please.”
A huge mass of iron was pointed out as we passed, not unlike the plates
of the famous “Merrimac,” or like the gunboat “Benton,” on the
Mississippi. It was one of the Rebel iron clads, sunk just before the
evacuation of the city. They had injured it very little, and our
authorities are confident of making it one of the best iron clads in the
service. Enforced self-reliance, had, indeed, gone far toward making the
South a nation; for here were fine engines, worthy of our most extensive
Northern shops, which had been manufactured in Georgia within a year.
Before the war, such an undertaking as making engines for a great
steamer, in the South, was scarcely dreamed of. Near the iron clad lay
some of the cigar-shaped torpedo boats—an invention never very
successful, and now, let us hope, with its occupation, wholly gone.
The obstructions in the harbor, which so long kept the iron clads under
Dupont and Dahlgren at bay, still stretched in a long line, unbroken in
parts, across from Sumter toward the land on either side. Plenty of
torpedoes were supposed to be still in the harbor—Captain Bradford
himself had been blown up not long ago by one of them, to the serious
discomposure of his personal effects, in cabin and state-room, but
without actual physical injury.
* * * * *
But for two things, a stranger might have supposed Sumter a mere pile of
mortar, stones and sand, which only culpable lack of enterprise left to
block up the harbor. From the center of the rubbish rose a flagstaff,
with the stars and stripes floating at the top; and near the water’s
edge, uninjured casements still stood among the debris, with black
muzzles peeping out, as from the lower deck of an old ship of the line.
Closer inspection showed, also, some little howitzers and other light
pieces, placed on what was once the parapet.
The sun fairly parboiled us, and, coming into this tropical heat so
suddenly—for the night before, on the deck of the “Wayanda,” at sea, we
were wearing overcoats—it was so oppressive as to produce a sickening
faintness on some of the party; but we patiently followed everywhere,
clambered over the shapeless sea wall, inspected the sand gabions,
worked our way into the snugly-protected little out-looks for the
sharpshooters, ran down the inside of what had been the walls, and dived
into the subterranean regions where the casemate guns stood all the time
of the bombardment, uninjured, but not deigning to waste their
ammunition in useless replies. The contracted but comparatively
comfortable quarters here remain almost as the Rebels left them. A long,
damp hall, with a few cots still standing in it, was the place for the
garrison, where they slept in comparative indifference to the explosion
of shells overhead; a rather more airy hall still contained the old,
split-bottom arm-chairs, which the officers had collected; on another
side were the hospitals, and—ghastly sight—there, on a shelf, were half
a dozen coffins, which had been all ready for the reception of the next
victims to Gillmore’s shells!
Fresh from Fort Fisher, which had been stormed, it was natural that one
should look on Fort Sumter with surprise, when told that it could not be
stormed. The officers say the garrison would have retreated to the
casemates, from whence they could have made the occupation of the
interior area of the fort impossible; but surely the men who swarmed
over that northern end of Fort Fisher, and fought through the whole
afternoon and far into the night, from traverse to traverse, down to the
Mound battery, would have needed little time to establish themselves
here. They say, too, that the fire from the Rebel works on Morris Island
would have rendered Sumter untenable, but that fire could not have been
more powerful than ours had been from James Island. Yet the Rebels did
not find Sumter untenable on account of our fire. Whether an assault
upon Sumter—necessarily bloody beyond precedent—could have been
justified by the maxims of war, is a question; but that such men as took
Fort Fisher could have taken Fort Sumter, if aided by a proper naval
force, seems to me clear.
It is said that the Rebels had a similar idea—long in fact before Fort
Fisher had been attacked. It was one of the strange personal
complications of this war, that the regular Rebel officer who had
command of Sumter when our terrific bombardment began, had no faith in
its defensibility, and had been replaced by a young nephew of the very
Dominie of our party, who has been walking with us over the ruins. The
Doctor is as glad as any of us that the fort is reduced, but his eye
kindled as Admiral Dahlgren gave the tribute of honest admiration to the
splendid bravery and tenacity of his Rebel nephew.
From Sumter we steamed off to Sullivan’s Island, and in a few moments
were clambering among the mazes of the Rebel works. Here, four years
ago, the first fortifications of the war were thrown up. Here the
dashing young cavaliers, the haughty Southrons who scorned the Yankee
scum and were determined to have a country and a history for themselves,
rushed madly into the war as into a picnic. Here the boats from
Charleston landed every day cases of champagne, _pâtés_ innumerable,
casks of claret, thousands of Havana cigars, for the use of the
luxurious young Captains and Lieutenants, and their friends among the
privates. Here were the first camps of the war, inscribed, as the
newspapers of those days tell us, with such names of companies as “The
Live Tigers,” “The Palmetto Guards,” “The Marion Scorpions,” “The Yankee
Smashers.” Here, with feasting, and dancing, and love making, with music
improvised from the ball room, and enthusiasm fed to madness by
well-ripened old Madeira, the free-handed, free-mannered young men who
had ruled “society” at Newport and Saratoga, and whose advent North had
always been waited for as the opening of the season, dashed into
revolution as they would into a waltz. Not one of them doubted that,
only a few months later, he should make his accustomed visit to the
Northern watering places, and be received with the distinction due a
hero of Southern independence. Long before these fortifications, thus
begun, were abandoned, they saw their enterprise in far different
lights, and conducted it in a far soberer and less luxurious way.
The works stretched along the sandy shore of Sullivan’s Island almost as
far as the eye can reach. They consist of huge embankments of sand,
revetted with palmetto logs, and were evidently planned throughout by a
skillful engineer. Coupling these with the works on the other side of
the harbor, and with Sumter, one readily believes them to constitute the
strongest system of harbor defenses on the coast. Strolling around one
of the works, we came upon a little slab, near a palmetto tree, under
the shade of the embankment, “To Osceola, Patriot and Warrior.” It is
the grave of one of the last of the Florida chieftains, who died here in
confinement, and for whom some white enemy, but admirer, had done these
last tender honors. Shall the latest warriors of this island ever find
similar admirers?
* * * * *
After our fatiguing trip, the Admiral spread out, on our return to the
flag-ship, a lunch of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, and other tropical
fruits, brought over from Havana. At the end of his table hung the only
Union flag, or trace of anything resembling it, which the naval officers
have been able to find anywhere in South Carolina or Georgia—a long,
narrow strip of coarse bunting, containing two stripes, red and white,
and a few stars in a ground of blue—taken from a deserted cabin near
Savannah.
New York papers, only five days old, had just arrived. In the midst of
the wonders which the war had wrought here, it was scarcely surprising
to see even the New York _Herald_ out vigorously for negro suffrage!
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Footnote 11:
The ignorance of the poor whites in South Carolina is proverbial. But,
as a negro acutely pointed out, “Dey haven’t learned, because dey
don’t care; we, because dey wouldn’t let us.” A little before the time
of this visit, James Redpath, acting as Superintendent of the schools,
reported nine public day and five night schools, under the
superintendence of his bureau, with the following average attendance:
At Normal School 620
At St. Philip School 1,100
At Morris Street School 822
At Ashley Street School 305
At King Street School (boys) 306
At Meeting Street School (boys) 256
At Chalmers Street School (girls) 161
At St. Michael’s School (boys) 160
Night Schools for adults contain 500