THE STRUGGLE FOR CHARLESTON
The Confederate war necessarily involved military operations at very
widely separated points at one and the same time. The telling of its
story, therefore, of necessity involves a good deal of harking back, as
the huntsmen say.
While Lee's tremendous campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania
had been going on, and while Grant was engaged in conquering Vicksburg
and reopening the Mississippi river, there was important fighting done
at other points and particularly at Charleston in South Carolina.
The earliest efforts of the Federal Government to shut the Confederates
in had been directed toward the closing of the port of Charleston.
There first a blockading fleet had been established, and when it
proved ineffective an effort had been made very early in the war
to close the port by sinking hulks, loaded with stone in the main
channels, leading into that harbor. Fortunately for all concerned,
this effort permanently to close a commercial port failed completely
and conspicuously. So far from obstructing the entrance to the harbor,
the sinking of the hulks there had the effect of extensive dredging.
The tide flows in and out of the port with a tremendous current which
brooks no resistance. When the stone laden hulks were sunk this
current quickly swept away the sand and mud from beneath them, so that
presently the harbor entrance was found to have been actually deepened
by the effort to close it.
From that time forward two objects engaged Federal attention so far
as Charleston was concerned; one of these was to maintain in front of
the harbor a blockading squadron strong enough to prevent the entrance
and exit of ships. The other was to force the harbor itself, capture
its defenses and recover the city to Federal possession. In both of
these efforts the Federal operations failed, but in their progress they
involved some of the severest and most picturesque battling of the war.
The profits of blockade running were so great that English capitalists
invested lavish sums in the business as a promising speculation. They
built ships of light draft, great power, and a speed greater than that
of any vessel in the American navy for the express purpose of carrying
on this forbidden traffic. These ships had but little free-board
exposed above the water. They were painted a dull sage green, as
nearly as possible the color of the sea itself, when looked at from
a distance. They were commanded by daring navigators and manned by
equally daring crews who stood ready to take any and every risk that
might aid in the achievement of ends so profitable as those aimed at in
this commerce.
And those profits were tempting in an extraordinary degree. With
cotton purchasable in the South for a few cents per pound, payable
in the enormously depreciated Confederate currency, and salable in
England at almost incredibly high prices in gold, and with all forms of
English-made goods bearing fabulous prices in the South, it was easily
calculable that if a ship could complete one round trip from Nassau to
Charleston and back again and then should be lost with all its cargo on
a second attempt, there would still remain to the owners a profit of
not less than a hundred per cent upon the money invested.
As a matter of fact the steamer Minho, and several others of the
blockade runners continued until late in the war to make their trips
successfully, almost with the regularity of packet boats. They carried
into Charleston stores of quinine, opium and other drugs which the
Confederate Government stood ready to buy at fabulous prices. They
carried clothing also, and shoes and harness, all of which were eagerly
purchased at any price that the importers might choose to charge. They
carried out of Charleston the cotton to which the markets of the world
were otherwise closed, and which could be purchased, therefore, at a
price so low as to make its cost an inconsiderable fraction unworthy of
consideration. So the blockade running went on.
So far as the reduction of the city and its defenses was concerned the
failure of Federal efforts was still more pronounced. Great sums were
expended, vast quantities of ammunition were wasted, and many lives
were sacrificed in an effort--futile from beginning to end--to reduce
this stronghold. Charleston, the birthplace of Secession and of the
Confederate war remained in Confederate possession until the very end.
The city did not fall under Federal control until those closing days
of the war when Sherman, after his march to the sea, began his final
movement northward in rear of the Carolina port.
In the meanwhile the struggle at that point was marked by many fierce
land contests in the country round about, and by much heroic naval
fighting.
The Confederates made such endeavors as they could, with the meager
means at hand, to create a naval power there which might be launched
against the blockading fleet outside. There was no navy yard and no
ship-building plant at Charleston, but with an energy that did credit
to the men who exercised it, several small gunboats and torpedo boats
were extemporized within the harbor and employed with energy and
effect. In January, 1863, two of these extemporized gunboats boldly
steamed out one morning, and assailed the Federal fleet lying off the
harbor. They promptly disabled two of the Federal ships, and compelled
them to strike their colors. But the rest of the enormous Federal fleet
came quickly to the rescue and the two little gunboats were forced to
retreat again, and take refuge under the guns of the forts.
This event gave warning at Washington of the necessity of promptly
and greatly strengthening the naval force employed off Charleston.
Accordingly, a powerful fleet, consisting of seven monitors, an
ironclad frigate, an ironclad ram and many gunboats was sent in
April, 1863, under command of Rear-Admiral S. F. Du Pont, to reduce
and capture Charleston. The expedition failed in its purpose, as all
previous ones sent with a like end in view had done, and as all future
ones did to the very end.
It was on the seventh of April, 1863, that Du Pont, with his masterful
armada, steamed into the harbor to reduce the forts and to sweep away
all the defenses of Charleston. At every point he found himself under a
destructive fire from forts and batteries occupied by men who knew how
to shoot. At every point he found his pathway obstructed by chains and
torpedoes and whatever else mechanical ingenuity up to that period in
human history had succeeded in devising for the checking of an enemy's
progress.
One of the Federal ironclads, the _Keokuk_, ventured too near Fort
Beauregard, manned by Confederate volunteers who had practised with
their cannon as they might have done with close range rifles until they
could plant a shell wheresoever they desired. The commandant of the
fort did not open fire upon the vessel until it had securely anchored
itself, bow and stern, in a position from which its officers expected
to make themselves quickly masters of the work. When they were thus
securely fastened in position the commander of the fort gave the order
to fire. Within the next minute or two the _Keokuk_ was struck and
penetrated by not less than 100 shells, ninety of which had passed
through her sides below the water line and burst within her engine
rooms. She went down as a cracked teapot might have done.
Another ironclad, the _Weehawken_, had been sent to lead the way,
pushing a raft before her in order to explode all contact torpedoes
before reaching them. As soon as she became involved in the chain and
other defenses of the harbor a terrific fire was opened upon her and
for half an hour she was threatened with the fate of the _Keokuk_.
At the end of that time she retired, baffled and beaten, and DuPont,
seeing how completely his effort had failed, abandoned the purpose of
taking Charleston or reducing its defenses by any sea attack. Nearly
all of his vessels had been so far damaged as to be unfit for further
use until repairs in them could be made. Most of the monitors had been
completely disabled for effective action by the smashing of titanic
shells against their turrets, which were bent and twisted in such
fashion that they could no longer be revolved. Many of the ships of
less formidable character had been altogether withheld from action in
view of the terrific effectiveness of the Confederate fire. Finding
that even his most powerful floating fighting machines were unable to
resist the fire of the forts Du Pont wisely reserved his weaker vessels
and kept them out of a contest in which they were so manifestly unfit
to engage.
Thus came to an end the best planned and most capably conducted effort
that was at any time made to conquer Charleston by sea. It was obvious
from that time forth that if Charleston was to be taken at all it must
be captured by other means than those of a flotilla attempting to force
its way into the splendidly defended harbor.
With that patience and persistence which are dominant characteristics
of the American mind the authorities at Washington set themselves at
once at work to devise and use those other and slower, but more hopeful
means of conquest. General Quincy A. Gillmore was assigned to this
work. A large force was placed under his command and whatever guns he
needed were subject to his requisition. The monitors and other naval
vessels were ordered to coöperate with him and act under his direction.
His plan was quickly and intelligently formed. Charleston lies upon
a tongue of land between the Ashley and Cooper rivers which, uniting
at the battery, form the bay exactly as the union of the North and
East rivers does at New York. Indeed, a map of Charleston in outline
differs from a map of New York only in one important particular, that
the widening of the peninsula in its middle part occurs on one side in
Charleston and on the opposite side in New York. South of the Ashley
river the coast line sweeps in a semicircle trending northwards and
bounded by James Island. That island is separated from the mainland
by Wapoo Cut, which connects the mouth of the Ashley river with Stono
Inlet. Stono Inlet separates James Island from John's Island and the
mainland on the south, and its entrance is from the sea. On the eastern
side of James Island there is an inlet known as Folly river which has
many ramifications, and which in its general course cuts off from James
Island a marsh known as Folly Island. This marsh lies along the ocean
front very much as Sandy Hook does at the mouth of New York harbor. A
narrow and shallow creek cuts Folly Island in two towards its northern
end, and the space north of that creek is known as Morris Island. The
northern end of Morris Island abuts upon the entrance to the harbor and
commands it on the one side while Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island
commands it on the other. Fort Sumter, built upon an artificial island
in the middle of the harbor, forms the third point in the triangle in
which the Federal fleet had encountered such difficulty, and suffered
such defeat.
General Gillmore's plan was to capture Morris Island, and gain
possession of its northern extremity, known as Cummings's Point, where
stood Battery Gregg, on guard against entrance to the harbor.
By an error in judgment the Confederates gave him his opportunity. They
withdrew from the marsh known as Folly Island, where they might have
defended themselves almost to the end of time. Gillmore was quick to
see their mistake, and to take advantage of it. He instantly seized
upon the southern end of Folly Island, and set to work to convert
his troops into amphibians. In boats, on rafts and by wading through
indescribable mud he pushed them northward to Morris Island.
In anticipation of this movement on his part, the Confederates had
strengthened a battery on that island, and named it Fort Wagner.
They had armed it with the best they had in the way of heavy guns,
light guns and infantry forces of grandly desperate courage and
determination. Here was to be fought out the question of the possession
of Morris Island and the control of Charleston harbor.
The fighting in front of that work was, from the first, desperate in
the extreme. In order to approach it at all the Federal troops were
forced to wade waist deep in water, carrying their rifles above their
heads. The first assault was made on the eleventh of July, 1863,
and was aided by a terrific fire from the fleet. It was led by the
first regiment of negroes that had thus far actively participated in
fighting in the war, and the conduct of those troops was worthy of
the best traditions of battling. The assault was met in such fashion
as to destroy the greater number of the assailants and hurl back the
fragmentary remains of the column in confusion. So desperate was this
endeavor and with such determination was the assault made that the
Federals lost more than 1,500 men while inflicting a loss of less than
one hundred upon their adversaries.
Having failed in direct assault General Gillmore determined to take
Fort Wagner and the works north of it by regular siege approaches.
General Gillmore was an engineer of the highest capacity and a soldier
of the utmost courage, energy and determination. He drew his first
parallel and mounted great siege guns upon it almost immediately. Then
working under such cover as he could provide he established a second
parallel, and opened fire from it on the twenty-third of July. He was
advancing in this slow and perilous way over a narrow strip of land--a
mere marsh scarcely at all elevated above the level of the surrounding
waters. His sick list was from the first enormous, and day by day it
grew as one man after another succumbed to the poisonous miasms of
those pestilential swamps in which, until the time of the war no white
man had ever dared spend a night between the first of June and the end
of November. "Country fever"--believed by many physicians to be nothing
less than yellow fever in its native and endemic form--slew far more of
his troops than the shot and the shell and the bullets of his adversary
did. Nevertheless, like the soldier that he was, Gillmore pressed on,
working his way inch by inch toward the hostile embankments.
Toward the last his lines were swept by a fire from a battery on James
Island and by a cross fire of infantry and sharpshooters from a point
in Fort Wagner itself. With the ingenuity of an accomplished engineer
he protected his men against these special dangers by bringing up tubes
of boiler iron through which the men were able to do their mining,
moving them forward at night, in order to cover the space excavated by
day.
In all the war no more desperate work was done than that of both the
Federals and Confederates on the face of Fort Wagner. The fire was
incessant and whether it came from siege guns, from field pieces, from
rifles or from pistols held in the hand, it was all at pistol shot
range. And it was all murderous in its effects. Yet on neither side
was there for one moment a sign of flinching by day or by night. Many
scores of men were shot through the body as they slept, and at no
moment of the twenty-four hours was any man secure against this danger.
Little by little Gillmore got his great guns into position for
breaching his enemy's works. The moving of each gun into its place cost
scores of lives and every attempt to fire it must cost other scores.
But here was work that must be done, and here were men resolute enough
to do it.
On the seventeenth of August the great guns opened against Fort Wagner
and Fort Sumter. Night and day for a full week the terrible conflict
continued. The walls of Fort Sumter were beaten into an amorphous
mass of bricks and mortar, its guns were dismounted and its men dwelt
ceaselessly under the fire of Gillmore's terrible instruments of
death. Nevertheless, they stood firm, and held their position without
faltering or failure. It is to be observed that the terror of this
struggle was due to the fact that the men on the one side and on the
other were of unconquerable spirit, and indomitable courage, and
that to them the measure of danger served only to set a measure for
endurance.
It should be stated here that in spite of the ruin of Fort Sumter's
defenses, the Confederates continued to occupy that work, driving
off several assaults that were afterwards made upon it. A little
later Major, afterwards Brigadier General, Stephen Elliott, of South
Carolina--a man almost womanly in his delicacy of demeanor, but
lion-like in courage and activity--was sent to take command of the
little infantry force which still held the ruins of the fort. With an
enterprise that suggests a creative imagination on his part, he ordered
cargoes of sand bags to be brought thither by night, and little by
little with these, he reconstructed the frowning walls, and mounted
upon them again the great guns that such a fort is supposed to carry.
His work was first revealed to the enemy in a dramatic and poetic way.
When the time came for the Christmas salute in which the foes, as it
were, lifted their caps to each other, the saluting was begun by the
ships of the Federal fleet. One after another, as they lay in line,
they fired the conventional number of guns. Then the Confederate
batteries took up the courteous work, each firing its quota. When the
last one on the left of Sumter had fired it was supposed that the
saluting would be continued by the next battery on the right of that
ruined work. It was not dreamed on either side that Sumter had a single
gun in position. But Elliott's work of reconstruction had been done.
His guns were ready again for the fray. And in his turn he fired the
Christmas salute, to the astonishment and admiration of all.
Then came one of the graceful courtesies of war. Under signal orders
from the commandant of the Federal fleet every ship in the squadron
dipped its flag in deference to Fort Sumter.
Here were brave men saluting brave men, and rejoicing in their courage
and their enterprise although these were antagonistically employed.
Perhaps no incident in all the war better illustrates than this one
does the sympathy that brave men feel for brave men, irrespective of
the lines of conflict drawn between them.
As he approached Fort Wagner General Gillmore was forced to work
upon ground so low that the spring tides freely washed over it, and
drenched his working details to their waists. Nevertheless, he pushed
them forward, determined that the work he had undertaken should be
fully done. As his parallels drew nearer and nearer to the work they
were intending to reduce they came at last upon ground which had been
mined, and planted with destructive torpedoes. Nevertheless, Gillmore
pushed forward his working parties and multiplied the fire of his
mortars which dropped shells incessantly into the fort, letting them
fall vertically so that no earthwork might afford protection against
their destructiveness. Under the glare of powerful calcium lights the
work went on by night as well as by day. During every minute of every
hour in the twenty-four the contest was continued ceaselessly. The
destructive fire upon the Confederate fort was added to by bringing a
great ironclad warship the _New Ironsides_ close in shore, and setting
her guns at work.
After two days of this fearful conflict Gillmore was ready with his
infantry columns to make that final rush upon the works by which he
hoped to conquer them. But suddenly, in anticipation of a charge
which they were too weakened to resist with any hope of success, the
Confederates abandoned Fort Wagner, and withdrew also from Battery
Gregg to the north of it.
This gave Gillmore complete control of Morris Island clear to
Cummings's Point, and as he believed, made him master of Charleston
harbor. In that belief he sent a fleet of whaleboats packed with
infantrymen to take possession of Fort Sumter. But the Confederates
there resisted with a vigor which destroyed most of the boats,
disabling their crews, and resulted in the killing or capturing of the
infantrymen who constituted their ship's companies.
It had been the hope of General Gillmore that when he should thus
secure command of the entrance to Charleston harbor the fleet lying
outside would press in and complete his work by capturing the city. But
in this hope he was disappointed. Admiral Dahlgren, who commanded the
fleet, knew far better than Gillmore did the reserve resisting power
of the Confederate batteries within the harbor, and he wisely declined
to push his vessels into a bay which, if he had resolutely invaded it,
would have become quickly a naval graveyard.
During all this time it had been Gillmore's ambition to bombard the
city of Charleston itself. To that end in August he had brought up to
Morris Island an eight-inch rifle gun of exceedingly long range and
ordered it planted at a point selected by himself. The point was one
so marshy that for a time no platform could be constructed that would
support the gun. It is humorously related that the officer constructing
it, having been told to make requisitions for whatever materials he
might need, formally sent in a requisition for "a hundred men eighteen
feet high." At last, however, by driving piles a platform was made and
the gun, which the men named the Swamp Angel, was got into position. It
threw thirty-six shells into the city of Charleston five miles away,
and then burst. In order to reach so great a distance it had been
elevated to about 23 degrees. No gun that was ever constructed other
than a mortar, can long endure firing at so great an elevation.
After his capture of Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg Gillmore resumed his
bombardment of the city from the latter point, which lies a mile or two
nearer than did the position of the Swamp Angel.
Gillmore had succeeded in capturing what had been supposed to be the
main defenses to the harbor and the city. He had utterly failed to
capture the city itself, or in any way to break the resistance which,
to the end, continued to hold the harbor secure against Federal attack.
During all this time the Federals had been holding Port Royal and the
islands along the coast between Charleston and Savannah. With strong
forces they had made many advances inland, hoping to break the railroad
line between the two cities and to push through the open country into
the rear of one or the other.
All of these efforts had failed. Chief among them was the attempt upon
Pocotaligo and Coosawhatchie, which was made with a force of five
thousand men on the twenty-second of October, 1862. This attempt was
defeated by a meager force of 350 men reinforced to 700, who stood all
day against eight times their number in defense of a causeway 225 yards
long, which ended in a bridge on the Confederate side. The bridge was
torn up by the Confederates and hour after hour during the long day
they stood to their guns and swept away every column that was formed to
advance along the causeway and rebuild the crossing.