Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON.

BLOCKADE OF THE HARBOR—DU PONT'S ATTACK—DEFEAT—CAPTURE OF THE "ATLANTA"—GILLMORE'S SIEGE—ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER—ITS CAPTURE—THE SWAMP ANGEL—BOMBARDMENT OF CHARLESTON—ACCURATE FIRING FROM MORTAR GUNS—TURNING NIGHT INTO DAY—STEADY CANNONADING FOR FORTY HOURS.

As Charleston was the cradle of secession, there was a special desire on the part of the Northern people that it should undergo the heaviest penalties of war. They wanted poetic vengeance to fall upon the very men that had taught disunion, fired upon Sumter, and kindled the flames of civil strife. And there were not a few at the South who shared this sentiment, believing that they had been dragged into ruin by the politicians of South Carolina. Many would have been glad if the whole State could have been pried off from the rest of the Union and slidden into the depths of the sea. But there was a better than sentimental reason for directing vigorous operations against Charleston. Its port was exceedingly useful to the Confederates for shipping their cotton to Europe and receiving in return the army clothing, rifles, and ammunition that were produced for them by English looms and arsenals. Early in the war the Government attempted to close this port with obstructions. Several old whale-ships were loaded with stone, towed into the channel, and sunk, at which there was a great outcry, and the books were searched to see whether this barbarous proceeding, as it was called, was permissible under the laws of war and of nations. In 1854 the harbor of Sebastopol had been obstructed in the same way; but that was done by the Russians, whose harbor it was, to prevent the enemy from coming in. The strong currents at Charleston soon swept away the old hulks or buried them in the sand, and a dozen war vessels had to be sent there to maintain the blockade. This was an exceedingly difficult task. The main channel ran for a long distance near the shore of Morris Island, and was protected by batteries. The westward-bound blockade runners commonly went first to the British port of Nassau, in the West Indies, and thence with a pilot sailed for Charleston. After the main channel had been closed in consequence of the occupation of Morris Island by National troops, steamers of very light draft, built in England for this special service, slipped in by the shallower passes. A great many were captured, for the blockaders developed remarkable skill in detecting their movements, but the practice was never wholly broken up till the city was occupied by the National forces in February, 1865.

In January, 1863, two Confederate iron-clads steamed out of the harbor, on a hazy morning, and attacked the blockading fleet. Two vessels, by shots through their steam-drums, were disabled, and struck their colors; but the remainder of the fleet came to their assistance, and the iron-clads were driven back into the harbor, leaving their prizes behind. General Beauregard and Captain Ingraham (commanding the military and naval forces of the Confederacy at Charleston) formally proclaimed this affair a victory that had "sunk, dispersed, and driven off or out of sight the entire blockading fleet," and, consequently, raised the blockade of the port. These assertions, repeated in foreign newspapers, threatened for a time to create serious complications with European powers, by raising the question whether the blockade (supposed to be thus broken) must not be re-proclaimed, and notice given to masters of merchant vessels, before it could be reëstablished. But the falsity of the claim was soon shown, and no foreign vessels accepted the invitation to demand free passage into the port of Charleston.

MAJOR-GENERAL QUINCY A. GILLMORE.

This affair increased the desire to capture the port, put an absolute end to the blockade-running there, and use it as a harbor of refuge for National vessels. Accordingly, a powerful fleet was fitted out for the purpose, and placed under the command of Rear-Admiral S. F. Du Pont, who had reduced the forts of Port Royal in November, 1861. It consisted of seven monitors, an iron-clad frigate, an iron-clad ram, and several wooden gunboats. On the 7th of April, 1863, favored by smooth water, Du Pont steamed in to attack the forts, but most extraordinary precautions had been taken to defend the city. The special desire of the Northern people to capture it was offset by an equally romantic determination on the part of the Secessionists not to part with the cradle in which their pet theory had been rocked for thirty years. Besides the batteries that had been erected for the reduction of Fort Sumter, they had established others, and they occupied that fort itself. All these works had been strengthened, and new guns mounted, including some specially powerful ones of English manufacture. All the channels were obstructed with piles and chains, with innumerable torpedoes, some of which were to be fired by electric wires from the forts, while others were arranged to explode whenever a vessel should run against them. The main channel, between Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter, was crossed by a heavy cable supported on empty barrels, with which was connected a network of smaller chains. In the south channel there was a tempting opening in the row of piles; but beneath this were some tons of powder waiting for the electric spark.

The monitor Weehawken led the way, pushing a raft before her to explode the torpedoes. Not a man was to be seen on any of the decks, and the forts were ominously silent. But when the Weehawken had reached the network of chains, and had become somewhat entangled therein with her raft, the batteries opened all around, and she and the other monitors that came to her assistance were the target for a terrible concentric fire of bursting shells and solid bolts. The return fire was directed principally upon Sumter, and was kept up steadily for half an hour, but seemed to have little effect; and after trying both the main and the south channel, the fleet retired. The monitor Keokuk, which had made the nearest approach to the enemy, was struck nearly a hundred times. Shots passed through both of her turrets, and there were nineteen holes in her hull. That evening she sank in an inlet. Most of the other vessels were injured, and some of the monitors were unable to revolve their turrets because of the bending of the plates.

REAR-ADMIRAL JOHN A. DAHLGREN AND OFFICERS.

Du Pont's defeat was offset two months later, when the Confederate iron-clad Atlanta started out on her first cruise. She was originally an English blockade-runner, and as she was unable to get out of the port of Savannah after the fall of Fort Pulaski, the Confederates conceived the idea of iron-plating her after the fashion of the Merrimac and sending her out to sink the monitors and raise the blockade of Charleston. It was said that the ladies of Charleston contributed their jewelry to pay the expenses, and after fourteen months of hard labor she was ready for action. But Du Pont had heard the story, and sent two monitors to watch her. On the 17th of June, early in the morning, she dropped down the channel, followed by two steamers loaded with citizens, including many ladies, who anticipated a great deal of pleasure in seeing their powerful iron-clad sink the monitors. These came up to meet her, the Weehawken, Captain Rodgers, taking the lead. Rodgers fired just five shots from his enormous eleven-inch and fifteen-inch guns. One struck the shutter of a port-hole and broke it, another knocked off the Atlanta's pilot-house, another struck the edge of the deck and opened the seams between the plates, and another penetrated the iron armor, splintered the heavy wooden backing, and disabled forty men. Thereupon the Atlanta hung out a white flag and surrendered, while the pleasure-seekers hastened back to Savannah. It is said that the vessel might have been handled better if she had not run aground. She was carrying an immense torpedo at the end of a boom thirty feet long, which projected from her bow under water. She was found to be provisioned for a long cruise, and was taken to Philadelphia and exhibited there as a curiosity.

REAR-ADMIRAL D. M. FAIRFAX.

The city of Charleston, between its two rivers, with its well-fortified harbor, bordered by miles of swampy land, was exceedingly difficult for an enemy to reach. General Quincy A. Gillmore, being sent with a large force to take it, chose the approach by way of Folly and Morris Islands, where the monitors could assist him. Hidden by a fringe of trees, he first erected powerful batteries on Folly Island. On the northernmost point of Morris Island (Cumming's Point) was the Confederate Battery Gregg, the one that had done most damage to Sumter at the opening of the war. South of this was Fort Wagner, and still farther south were other works.

Fort Wagner was a very strong earthwork, measuring on the inside six hundred and thirty feet from east to west, and two hundred and seventy-five feet from north to south. It had a bomb-proof magazine, and a heavy traverse protecting its guns from any possible attack on the land side. Behind the sea-face was a well-constructed bomb-proof, into which no shot ever penetrated. The land-face was constructed with reëntering angles, so that the approaches could all be swept by cross fire, and the work was surrounded by a ditch filled with water, in which was a line of boarding-pikes fastened together with interlaced wire, and there were also pickets at the front of the fort with interwoven wire a slight distance above the ground, to impede the steps of any assaulting force. It was one of the most elaborate works constructed during the war. Its engineer, Captain Cleves, was killed by one of the first shells fired at it.

On the morning of July 10th, Gillmore suddenly cut down the trees in his front and opened fire upon the most southerly works on Morris Island, while at the same time the fleet commanded by Admiral Dahlgren, who had succeeded Du Pont, bombarded Fort Wagner. Under cover of this fire troops were landed, and the earthworks were quickly taken.

The day being terribly hot, the advance on Fort Wagner was postponed till the next morning, and then it was a failure. A week later a determined assault was made with a force of six thousand men, the advance being led by the first regiment of colored troops (the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts) that had been raised under the authorization that accompanied the Emancipation Proclamation. A bombardment of the fort by the land batteries and the fleet was kept up from noon till dusk, and during its last hour there was a heavy thunder-storm. As soon as this was over, the assaulting columns were set in motion. They marched out under a concentrated fire from all the Confederate batteries, then met sheets of musketry fire that blazed out from Wagner, then crossed the ditch waist-deep in water, while hand-grenades were thrown from the parapet to explode among them, and even climbed up to the rampart. But here the surviving remnant met a stout resistance and were hurled back. General Strong, Colonel Chatfield, Colonel Putnam, and Robert G. Shaw, the young commander of the black regiment, were all killed, and a total loss was sustained of fifteen hundred men, while the Confederates lost but about one hundred.

In burying the dead, the Confederates threw the body of Colonel Shaw into the bottom of a trench, and heaped upon it the bodies of black soldiers, whose valor, no less than their color, had produced an uncontrollable frenzy in the Confederate mind. When it was inquired for, under flag of truce, word was sent back: "We have buried him with his niggers." Those who thus tried to cast contempt upon the boyish colonel were apparently not aware that he was braver than any of his foes. In advancing along that narrow strip of land, every foot of which was swept by a deadly fire, crossing the ditch and mounting the parapet, Colonel Shaw exhibited a physical courage that it was impossible to surpass; while in organizing and leading men of the despised race that was now struggling toward liberty, he showed a moral courage such as the rebels neither shared nor comprehended.

Among those who participated in this sorrowful enterprise was the Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, chaplain of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment, who was so assiduous in his attentions to the wounded, and remained so long on the field among them, that he was captured by the Confederates, who held him a prisoner for several months. Among those in attendance at the hospital at the first parallel was Clara Barton, who afterward became famous for her humane services.

Gen. Alvin C. Voris, who was seriously wounded in the assault on Fort Wagner, has given a vivid description of his experiences there, from which we quote a few interesting passages:

"All through the night of July 17th I lay with my men, the Sixty-seventh Ohio, within half canister range of the fort. It was very dark, cloudy, and enlivened by an occasional splash of rain and lightning, by which we could see sentinels on beat on the fort. Just before break of day we crawled quietly away, and took a good square breath of relief as we passed behind our first line of intrenchments. There we undertook to rest under a most scorching sun and on burning white sand, which reflected back both light and heat rays with torturing rigor. We were compelled to work night and day, twelve hours on and twelve off, all the while under shot and exploding shell from some quarter. When off duty we tried to rest ourselves under the shelter of the low sand-waves silently thrown up by the wind. Our poor tired bodies became so exhausted under the great pressure upon us that we would stretch out on the burning sands, even when under the greatest danger, and snatch a few hours of fitful, anxious sleep, frequently to be awakened by the explosion of some great shell. The land and sea breezes kept the air full of floating sand, which permeated everything—clothing, eyes, ears, nostrils—and at the height of the wind would fly with such force as to make the face and hands sting with pain.

"Just at dark ten regiments of infantry were formed along the beach, one and a half miles below the fort, and the charge was at once undertaken. Quietly the column marched until its head had passed the line of our field batteries. No sooner had this taken place than one thousand six hundred men in Wagner and Gregg sprang to arms and opened on the advancing columns with shot, shell, and musketry, which called to their immediate assistance the armed energies of Sumter, Moultrie, and Beauregard, and all the batteries on Sullivan's and James's Islands. When we got within canister range of the fort there were added to this awful cataclysm double-shotted charges of canister from eight heavy guns directly raking our approach, each discharge equal to a double pailful of cast-iron bullets, three-fourths of an inch in diameter. Every moment some unfortunate comrade fell, to rise no more, but we closed up our shattered ranks and pressed on with such impetuosity that we scaled the walls and planted our banners on the fort. The Sixty-seventh, with heroic cheers, flung her flag to the midnight breezes on the rampart of Wagner, but only to bring it away riddled to tatters. Seven out of eight of the color-guard were shot down, and Color-Sergeant McDonald, with a broken leg, brought it away. Lieutenant Cochran went alone to headquarters, two thousand five hundred yards to the rear, for reinforcements, assuring General Gillmore that we could hold the fort, and then went back to Wagner and brought off eighteen out of forty men with whom he started in the column in that fatal charge. Two other lieutenants, with a dozen men, held one of the enemy's large guns for nearly two hours, over which they had hand-to-hand contests with the soldiers in charge of the piece.

"I was shot within a hundred and fifty yards of the fort, and so disabled that I could not go forward.... Two boys of the Sixty-second Ohio found me and carried me to our first parallel, where had been arranged an extempore hospital. Here a surgeon sent his savage finger-nail into my lacerated side and pronounced the bullet beyond his reach, and said I would not need his further attention. Like a baby I fainted, and, on reviving, laid my poor aching head on a sand-bag to recruit a little strength. That blessed chaplain, Henry Clay Trumbull, found me and poured oil of gladness into my soul and brandy into my mouth, whereat I praised him as a dear good man and cursed that monster of a surgeon, which led the chaplain to think the delirium of death was turning my brain, and he reported me among the dead of Wagner."

General Gillmore now resorted to regular approaches for the reduction of Fort Wagner. The first parallel was soon opened, and siege guns mounted, and the work was pushed as rapidly as the unfavorable nature of the ground would admit. By the 23d of July a second parallel was established, from which fire was opened upon Fort Sumter, two miles distant, and upon the intervening earthworks. As the task proceeded the difficulty increased, for the strip of land grew narrower as Fort Wagner was approached, and the men in the trenches were subjected to cross-fire from a battery on James's Island, as well as from sharp-shooters and from the fort itself. A dozen breaching batteries of enormous rifled guns were established, most of the work being done at night, and on the 17th of August all of them opened fire. The shot and shell were directed mainly against Fort Sumter, and in the course of a week its barbette guns were dismounted, its walls were knocked into a shapeless mass of ruins, and its value as anything but a rude shelter for infantry was gone.

The parallels were still pushed forward toward Wagner, partly through ground so low that high tides washed over it, and finally where mines of torpedoes had been planted. When they had arrived so near that it was impossible for the men to work under ordinary circumstances, the fort was subjected to a bombardment with shells fired from mortars and dropping into it almost vertically, while the great rifled guns were trained upon its bomb-proof at short range, and the iron-clad frigate New Ironsides came close in shore and added her quota in the shape of eleven-inch shells fired from eight broadside guns. Powerful calcium lights had been prepared, so that there was no night there, and the bombardment went on incessantly. At the end of two days, three columns of infantry were ready to storm the work, when it was discovered that the Confederates had suddenly abandoned it. Battery Gregg, on Cumming's Point, was also evacuated.

It is easy to tell all this in a few words; but no brief account of that operation can give the reader any adequate idea of the enormous labor it involved, the danger, the anxiety, and the dogged perseverance of the besiegers. It required the efforts of three hundred men to move a single gun up the beach. General Gillmore was one of the most accomplished of military engineers, and we present here a few of the more interesting passages from his admirable official report:

At the second parallel the "Surf Battery" had barely escaped entire destruction, about one-third of it having been carried away by the sea. Its armament had been temporarily removed to await the issue of the storm. The progress of the sap was hotly opposed by the enemy, with the fire of both artillery and sharp-shooters. At one point in particular, about two hundred yards in front of Wagner, there was a ridge, affording the enemy good cover, from which we received an unceasing fire of small-arms, while the guns and sharp-shooters in Wagner opened vigorously at every lull in the fire directed upon it from our batteries and gunboats. The firing from the distant James's Island batteries was steady and accurate. One attempt, on the 21st, to obtain possession of the ridge with infantry having failed, it was determined to advance by establishing another parallel. On the night of August 21st the fourth parallel was opened about one hundred yards from the ridge, partly with the flying sap and partly with the full sap. At the place selected for it the island is about one hundred and sixty yards in width above high water. It was now determined to try and dislodge the enemy from the ridge with light mortars and navy howitzers in the fourth parallel, and with other mortars in rear firing over those in front. The attempt was made on the afternoon of August 26th, but did not succeed. Our mortar practice was not very accurate. Brigadier-General Terry was ordered, on the 26th of August, to carry the ridge at the point of the bayonet, and hold it. This was accomplished, and the fifth parallel established there on the evening of the same day, which brought us to within two hundred and forty yards of Fort Wagner. The intervening space comprised the narrowest and shallowest part of Morris island. It was simply a flat ridge of sand, scarcely twenty-five yards in width, and not exceeding two feet in depth, over which the sea in rough weather swept entirely across to the marsh on our left. Approaches by the flying sap were at once commenced on this shallow beach, from the right of the fifth parallel, and certain means of defence in the parallel itself were ordered. It was soon ascertained that we had now reached the point where the really formidable, passive, defensive arrangements of the enemy commenced. An elaborate and ingenious system of torpedo mines, to be exploded by the tread of persons walking over them, was encountered, and we were informed by the prisoners taken on the ridge that the entire area of firm ground between us and the fort, as well as the glacis of the latter on its south and east fronts, was thickly filled with these torpedoes. This knowledge brought us a sense of security from sorties, for the mines were a defence to us as well as to the enemy. By daybreak on the 27th of August our sappers had reached, by a rude and unfinished trench, to within one hundred yards of Fort Wagner. The dark and gloomy days of the siege were now upon us. Our daily losses, although not heavy, were on the increase, while our progress became discouragingly slow, and even fearfully uncertain. The converging fire from Wagner alone almost enveloped the head of our sap, delivered, as it was, from a line subtending an angle of nearly ninety degrees, while the flank fire from the James's Island batteries increased in power and accuracy every hour. To push forward the sap in the narrow strip of shallow shifting sand by day was impossible, while the brightness of the prevailing harvest moon rendered the operation almost as hazardous by night. Matters, indeed, seemed at a standstill, and a feeling of despondency began to pervade the rank and file of the command. There seemed to be no adequate return in accomplished results for the daily losses which we suffered, and no means of relief, cheering and encouraging to the soldier, appeared near at hand. In this emergency, although the final result was demonstrably certain, it was determined, in order to sustain the flagging spirits of the men, to commence vigorously and simultaneously two distinct methods of attack, viz., first, to keep Wagner perfectly silent with an overpowering curved fire from siege and coehorn mortars, so that our engineers would have only the more distant batteries of the enemy to annoy them; and, second, to breach the bomb-proof shelter with rifled guns, and thus deprive the enemy of their only secure cover in the work, and, consequently, drive them from it. Accordingly, all the light mortars were moved to the front and placed in battery; the capacity of the fifth parallel and the advanced trenches for sharp-shooters was greatly enlarged and improved; the rifled guns in the left breaching batteries were trained upon the fort and prepared for prolonged action; and powerful calcium lights to aid the night-work of our cannoneers and sharp-shooters, and blind those of the enemy, were got in readiness. The coöperation of the powerful battery of the New Ironsides, Captain Rowan, during the daytime, was also secured.

A BOMB-PROOF.

MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM B. TALIAFERRO, C. S. A.

These final operations against Fort Wagner were actively inaugurated at break of day on the morning of September 5th. For forty-two consecutive hours the spectacle presented was of surpassing sublimity and grandeur. Seventeen siege and coehorn mortars unceasingly dropped their shells into the work, over the heads of our sappers and the guards of the advanced trenches; thirteen of our heavy Parrott rifles—one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred pounders—pounded away at short though regular intervals, at the southwest corner of the bomb-proof; while during the daytime the New Ironsides, with remarkable regularity and precision, kept an almost incessant stream of eleven-inch shells from her eight-gun broadside, ricocheting over the water against the sloping parapet of Wagner, whence, deflected upward with a low remaining velocity, they dropped nearly vertically, exploding within or over the work, and rigorously searching every part of it except the subterranean shelters. The calcium lights turned night into day, and while throwing around our own men an impenetrable obscurity, they brilliantly illuminated every object in front, and brought the minutest details of the fort into sharp relief. In a few hours the fort became practically silent.

The next night, after the capture of Fort Wagner, a few hundred sailors from the fleet went to Fort Sumter in row-boats and attempted its capture. But they found it exceedingly difficult to climb up the ruined wall; most of their boats were knocked to pieces by the Confederate batteries; they met an unexpected fire of musketry and hand-grenades, and two hundred of them were disabled or captured.

While all this work was going on, General Gillmore thought to establish a battery near enough to Charleston to subject the city itself to bombardment. A site was chosen on the western side of Morris Island, and the necessary orders were issued. But the ground was soft mud, sixteen feet deep, and it seemed an impossible task. The captain, a West Pointer, to whom it was assigned, was told that he must not fail, but he might ask for whatever he needed, whereupon he made out a formal requisition for "a hundred men eighteen feet high," and other things in proportion. The jest seems to have been appreciated, but the jester was relieved from the duty, which was then assigned to Col. Edward W. Serrell, a volunteer engineer, who accomplished the work. Piles were driven, a platform was laid upon them, and a parapet was built with bags of sand, fifteen thousand being required. All this had to be done after dark, and occupied fourteen nights. Then, with great labor, an eight-inch rifled gun was dragged across the swamp and mounted on this platform. It was nearly five miles from Charleston, but by firing with a high elevation was able to reach the lower part of the city. The soldiers named this gun the "Swamp Angel." Late in August it was ready for work, and, after giving notice for the removal of non-combatants, General Gillmore opened fire. A few shells fell in the streets and produced great consternation, but at the thirty-sixth discharge the Swamp Angel burst, and it never was replaced.

Gillmore had supposed that when Sumter was silenced the fleet would enter the harbor, but Admiral Dahlgren did not think it wise to risk his vessels among the torpedoes, especially as the batteries of the inner harbor had been greatly strengthened. As Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg were nearer the city by a mile than the Swamp Angel, Gillmore repaired them, turned their guns upon Charleston, and kept up a destructive bombardment for weeks.

As a protection to the city, under the plea that its bombardment was a violation of the rules of war, the Confederate authorities selected from their prisoners fifty officers and placed them in the district reached by the shells. Capt. Willard Glazier, who was there, writes: "When the distant rumbling of the Swamp Angel was heard, and the cry 'Here it comes!' resounded through our prison house, there was a general stir. Sleepers sprang to their feet, the gloomy forgot their sorrows, conversation was hushed, and all started to see where the messenger would fall. At night we traced along the sky a slight stream of fire, similar to the tail of a comet, and followed its course until 'whiz! whiz!' came the little pieces from our mighty two-hundred pounder, scattering themselves all around." By placing an equal number of Confederate officers under fire, the Government compelled the removal of its own.

ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, CHARLESTON, S. C.