From Wartime Ruin to National Monument
The task of clearing the rubble and ruin of war from the interior of Fort Sumter began in the 1870s. In the forefront of the project was Quincy A. Gillmore, whose Union gunners were responsible for most of the destruction in the first place. The outer walls of the gorge and right flank, largely demolished by the shellfire, were partially rebuilt. The other walls of the fort, left jagged and torn 30 to 40 feet above the water, were leveled to approximately half their original height. Through a left flank casemate, where a barracks once stood, a new sally port was constructed. Within the fort itself, earth and concrete supports for 10 rifled and smoothbore guns mounted en barbette (guns placed on an open parapet) began to take shape.
Construction was well advanced by June 1876, when a shortage of funds forced suspension of activity. By that time, only three permanent barbette platforms had been built; the other seven remained temporary (wooden) platforms upon which were mounted four 8-inch Parrott rifles and two 15-inch Rodman smoothbores. In a modification of the original plan, 11 lower-tier gunrooms of the original fort along the right face and about the salient had been repaired and armed with 6.4-inch Parrotts. These 17 guns, in a gradually deteriorating state, constituted Fort Sumter’s armament for the next 23 years.
From 1876 to 1898, the fort stood largely neglected, important mainly as a lighthouse station. Most of that time it was also ungarrisoned and in the charge of a “fortkeeper” or an ordnance sergeant. Lacking maintenance funds, Sumter, even then visited by thousands each year, fell into a state of dilapidation. By 1887 the wooden barbette platforms had rotted away so that “not one gun could be safely fired”; the neat earth slopes had eroded into “irregular mounds”; and quantities of sand had drifted onto the parade ground. At casemate level, salt water dashed freely through the open embrasures, the shutters of which were no longer in working order, and the guns rusted so badly that they could not be moved on their tracks.
By the end of the century, the major world powers were building massive steel navies, and the United States responded by modernizing its coastal defenses. In 1899 two 12-inch breech-loading rifled guns were installed at Fort Sumter, their position further strengthened by earth fill extending to the top of the old walls. The massive concrete emplacement for this battery (named for South Carolinian Isaac Huger, a major general in the American Revolution) dominates the central portion of the fort today. The guns, long since outmoded, were removed for scrap in 1943. During late World War II, Fort Sumter was armed with four 90-mm guns manned by a company of Coast Artillery. The fort, transferred from the War Department to the National Park Service, became a national monument on July 12, 1948.
The following guide highlights the main historical portions of Fort Sumter today. There is no set sequence by which to see the fort, but you may want to refer to the photograph on pages [56]-57 for orientation. Hours of operation and tour boat schedules can be ascertained by calling (843) 883-3123.