The Struggle for Charleston, 1863-65
With Fort Sumter in Confederate hands, the port of Charleston became an irritating loophole in the Federal naval blockade of the Atlantic coast—doubly so because at Charleston “rebellion first lighted the flame of civil war.” As late as January 1863, vessels plied to and from Charleston and the Bahamas “with the certainty and promptness of a regular line,” bringing needed war supplies in exchange for cotton.
Capture of Port Royal Harbor on November 7, 1861, by a Federal fleet under Capt. Samuel F. Du Pont, however, had made possible land and sea operations against Charleston. In June 1862, an attempt was made by Federal Maj. Gen. David Hunter to push through to the city by James Island on the south. This ended in Union disaster at the bloody battle of Secessionville. Meanwhile, the Monitor-Virginia (Merrimack) action in Hampton Roads had demonstrated the feasibility of an “ironclad” naval expedition against Fort Sumter, the key to the harbor. Sumter, rebuilt and strengthened, was now a formidable work armed with some 95 guns and garrisoned with upwards of 500 men. By May 1862, the Navy Department seemed possessed of what then Rear Admiral Du Pont was calling a “morbid appetite” to capture Charleston. But the War Department, far from supplying the additional troops to Hunter’s command, withdrew units to reenforce Gen. George B. McClellan’s army in its campaign against Richmond, the Confederate capital.
On April 5, 1863, a fleet of nine Federal ironclads, armed with 32 heavy-caliber guns, appeared off Charleston bar. Seven were of the single-turret “cheesebox on a raft” Monitor-type; one, the Keokuk, was a double-turreted affair; and the last, the flagship New Ironsides, was an ironclad frigate. With ebb tide on the afternoon of the 7th, the “new-fangled” ironclads steamed single-file up the main ship channel east of Morris Island. The weather was clear and bright; the water “as stable as of a river.” By 3 o’clock, the Weehawken, the leading monitor, had come within range, and Fort Moultrie opened fire. The Passaic, second in line, responded. Fort Sumter held fire, its guns trained on a buoy at the turn of the channel. When the Weehawken came abreast of that point, Sumter’s right flank guns let loose. These were followed by all the guns on Sullivans Island, at Fort Moultrie, and at Cummings Point that could be brought to bear.
The repulse of the navy’s April 7, 1863, attempt to capture Charleston (depicted in a contemporary engraving from Harper’s Weekly) persuaded Du Pont “that the place cannot be taken by a purely naval attack.” The admiral’s pessimism about ironclad ships of war and his decision not to renew the attack on Charleston angered the Navy Department and led to his removal from command.
Rear Adm. Samuel F. Du Pont, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.
It was too much for the slow and unwieldy ironclads. In the course of the 2½-hour fight, only one came within 900 yards of Fort Sumter. To the 2,209 rounds hurled against them, the ironclads were able to return 154, only 34 of which found the target. These breached and loosened 25 feet of the right flank parapet and pocked the walls elsewhere with craters up to 2½ feet deep. But it was far from enough; Fort Sumter remained strong and secure. On the other hand, five of the ironclads were seriously disabled by the accurate Confederate fire, and one, the Keokuk, sank the following morning in the shallow water off Morris Island. Confederate troops later recovered the guns of the Keokuk and mounted one of them at Fort Sumter.
The North, confident of victory, was stunned by Du Pont’s failure at a time when the general military situation was gloomy. The war in the East had been bloody and indecisive; the news from the West was no better. Federal authorities now looked to a combined operation to seize Morris Island and from there demolish Fort Sumter. With Fort Sumter reduced, the harbor could be entered.
Folly Island and Coles Island, next south of Morris Island, had been occupied by Northern troops just prior to the naval attack. In June and July, the north end of Folly Island was fortified. In a remarkable operation, 47 guns and mortars were secretly emplaced “within speaking distance of the enemy’s pickets.” Some 11,000 men were concentrated on the island. Brig. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, the “breacher” of Fort Pulaski, took command on June 12. Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren superseded Admiral Du Pont on July 6.
During that time the Confederates mounted guns at the south end of Morris Island and strengthened the earthworks at its upper end—Battery Gregg at Cummings Point and Battery Wagner some 1,400 yards to the south. The latter work, commanding the island at its narrowest point, was made into a formidable “sand fort” mounting about 15 guns.
Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, commander of the Federal land forces besieging Charleston, 1863-64. In the year that he spent at Charleston, Gillmore and Du Pont’s replacement, Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren, conducted a cooperative and sustained operation that resulted in the capture of Morris Island and Battery Wagner and the virtual demolition of Fort Sumter.
Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren
Fort Sumter, 1,390 yards distant from Battery Gregg, prepared for siege, too. Brick and stone masonry “counter-forts,” already built at each extremity of the esplanade as protection for the magazines, were now strengthened, and much of the remaining gorge exterior was sandbagged or otherwise protected. The casemates on the right or sea front flank were filled with sand, and the rooms on the gorge were filled with damp cotton bales laid in sand. The upper-tier magazines were abandoned and filled with sandbags to protect the magazines below. Protective revetments and other defensive devices were introduced at various points throughout the fort. Frequently during this period the garrison was host to officers on leave, citizens of Charleston, and even many ladies, who came to see the scars of the April battle, to admire the drill, or to observe the preparations. At the end of June 1863, Fort Sumter was garrisoned by five companies (perhaps 500 men) of the First South Carolina Artillery, under command of Col. Alfred Rhett. Its armament had been reduced to 68 guns and mortars, many of the best pieces having been removed to strengthen other fortifications about the harbor.
On the morning of July 10, 3,000 Union infantry, supported by four monitors and the artillery on Folly Island, descended on the southern end of Morris Island. Directing the attack was Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, a company commander at Fort Sumter two years before. Within four hours, most of the Island was in his hands. The Confederate forces, outgunned and outmanned, fell back to Battery Wagner. Sumter’s guns helped to cover their retreat.
A “desperate” assault upon Wagner the next morning failed, though the parapet was briefly gained. General Gillmore established counter-batteries and tried again on the 18th. From noon until nightfall that day, “without cessation or intermission,” Federal guns poured a “storm of shot and shell upon Fort Wagner ... perhaps unequalled in history.” This was followed by an attack by some 6,000 troops, spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts, the first U.S. black regiment to go to war. In a short, savage struggle, Seymour’s force suffered 1,500 casualties. Though one angle of the fort was gained and held for a time, the attack was repulsed.
Part of Gillmore’s map of the Charleston defenses.
Col. Alfred Rhett commanded Fort Sumter during the April 1863 ironclad attack and the first great bombardment of August-September.
Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, who served at Fort Sumter under Anderson in 1860-61, commanded the assault troops that captured Morris Island in July 1863. He was severely wounded in the subsequent attack on Battery Wagner.
Thwarted in his plan to secure easy possession of Morris Island as a base for breaching operations against Fort Sumter, Gillmore now determined to batter the fort into submission from the ground he already possessed. Batteries Wagner and Gregg would be taken by protracted siege operations. Anticipating that Sumter was “liable to be silenced sooner or later” and fearing attack at other points about the harbor, Confederate authorities continued to remove the fort’s guns and ammunition for use elsewhere. By mid-August, Sumter’s armament was reduced to 38 cannon and two mortars.
At distances of 2 to 2½ miles from Fort Sumter—distances extraordinary for such operations—Gillmore set up eight batteries of heavy rifled cannon. In the marsh west of Morris Island, where the mud was like liquid, his engineers successfully placed a 200-pounder Parrott rifle—the notorious “Swamp Angel”—to fire on Charleston.
Gillmore’s batteries did some experimental firing in late July and early August, testing the range and the effects of their shots on Sumter. The real bombardment began on August 17, with nearly 1,000 shells being fired that first day alone. Almost 5,000 more were fired during the week that followed. Even at the end of the first day it was obvious that the fort was never intended to withstand the heavy Parrotts. Three days later, a monstrous 13-ton Parrott rifle hurling 250-pound shells was added to Gillmore’s armament, making 18 rifled cannon in action. The range kept Sumter from replying to the land batteries, and the monitors appeared only fleetingly.
On the 21st, with the “Swamp Angel” in position, Gillmore demanded the evacuation of Fort Sumter and Morris Island. Otherwise he would fire on Charleston. The ultimatum was unsigned, however, and before the Confederates could confirm its origin, Gillmore had opened fire. But little damage had been done when, on the 36th round, the “Swamp Angel” burst. Meanwhile, Beauregard had delivered an indignant reply. The bombardment of Sumter continued.
Early on the 23d, against Dahlgren’s ironclads, Fort Sumter fired what proved to be its last shots in action. Its brick masonry walls were shattered and undermined; a breach 8 by 10 feet yawned in the upper casemates of the left face; at points, the sloped debris of the walls already provided a practicable route for assault. Still, the Confederate garrison, supplemented by a force of 200 to 400 blacks, labored night and day, strengthening and repairing the defenses. The debris, accumulating above the sand- and cotton-filled rooms, itself bolstered the crumbling walls. By the 24th, Gillmore was able to report the “practical demolition” of the fort. On the 26th General Beauregard ordered the fort held “to the last extremity.”
The bombardment continued sporadically during the following week. On the night of September 1-2, the ironclads moved against the fort—the first major naval operation against Fort Sumter since the preceding April. For five hours, the frigate New Ironsides and five monitors bombarded the fort, now without a gun with which to answer the “sneaking sea-devils.” Two hundred and forty-five shot and shell were hurled against the ruins—twice as many as were thrown in the April attack. The tidal conditions, plus a “rapid and sustained” fire from Fort Moultrie, forced the monitors to withdraw.
Some desultory firing on the 2d brought to an end the first sustained bombardment of Fort Sumter. More than 7,300 rounds had been hurled against the fort since August 17. Now, with the fort reduced to a “shapeless and harmless mass of ruins,” the Federals could concentrate on Battery Wagner, only 100 yards from Gillmore’s forward trenches.
On the morning of September 5, Federal cannoneers began a devastating barrage against Battery Wagner. For 42 hours, night and day, in what General Gillmore called a spectacle “of surpassing sublimity and grandeur,” 17 mortars and nine rifled cannon, as well as the powerful guns of the ironclads, pounded the earthwork. Calcium lights turned night into day. On the night of September 6-7, the Confederates evacuated Wagner and Gregg. Morris Island was at last in Union hands.
Fort Sumter, however, remained defiant. When Dahlgren demanded the fort’s surrender, on the morning of the 7th, General Beauregard sent word that the admiral could have it when he could “take it and hold it.” On September 4 the garrison had been relieved by fresh troops, 320 strong. Maj. Stephen Elliott succeeded to the command.
The Fight for Battery Wagner
On July 10, 1863, Union forces successfully invaded Morris Island, a narrow stretch of land which formed the southern entrance to Charleston Harbor. The Confederate defenders were pushed back nearly 3 miles to a strong fortification known as Battery Wagner, whose heavy guns commanded nearly the entire length of the island. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore knew that this fort would have to be taken if Morris Island was to serve as a base of operations against Charleston.
Accordingly, at dusk on July 18th, three Union brigades numbering about 6,000 men commanded by Gen. Truman Seymour assembled for an assault on Battery Wagner. Assigned to lead the column was Col. Robert Gould Shaw’s 54th Massachusetts Infantry, composed of 600 free-black men recruited from various Northern States. “We shall take the fort or die there!” shouted Colonel Shaw as Seymour ordered the troops forward.
Col. Robert Gould Shaw
Wagner’s artillery opened fire when the Federals were within 200 yards of the battery. Then the fort’s defenders, North and South Carolina troops, let fly a volley of musketry that tore huge gaps in the Union ranks. Those who survived this terrible fire, having reached the ditch in front of the fort, sloshed through 3 feet of water and scrambled up the walls of the parapet bravely waving both the national flag and the Massachusetts State colors. Shaw himself gained the rampart and shouted, “Forward, Fifty-fourth!”, then fell dead with a bullet in his heart.
Now other Federal regiments joined in the attack, but after several hours of desperate fighting, including hand-to-hand combat on Wagner’s parapet, the Federals were driven back. Bodies lay piled three deep in front of the fort and 9 of the 10 Union regimental commanders were killed or wounded. The 54th Massachusetts alone lost nearly 40 percent of the men engaged.
Battery Wagner finally came into Union hands on September 6, 1863, after the Confederates were ordered to evacuate Morris Island entirely. Contrary to Northern expectations, Fort Sumter and the city of Charleston did not fall into Federal possession until February 1865.
Maj. Stephen Elliott, one-time captain of the Beaufort (Light) Artillery, assumed command of the Fort Sumter ruins in September 1863 at the personal request of General Beauregard. Elliott remained in charge until May 1864, when he was transferred to command a regiment in Virginia.
Dahlgren “immediately designed to put into operation a plan to capture Fort Sumter.” Accordingly the monitor Weehawken was ordered “to cut off all communication” via Cummings Point, while New Ironsides and the remaining ironclads moved up “to feel, and if possible, pass” the obstructions thought to be in the channel north of the fort. But Weehawken grounded, and the monitors caught such a severe fire from Fort Moultrie and the other Confederate batteries on Sullivans Island, that the admiral “deemed it best to give [his] entire attention to the Weehawken” and withdraw. Whatever his original plan, Dahlgren now decided upon a small-boat assault. The task seemed simple: with “nothing but a corporal’s guard in the fort,” all he had to do was “go and take possession.”
On the night of September 8-9, 400 sailors and marines made the attempt. A tug towed the small boats within 800 yards of the fort, then cast them loose. In the darkness and confusion, plans went awry and two columns advanced simultaneously upon the right flank of the fort. The Confederates coolly held their fire till the Federals in the lead boats began to land, then let loose with musketry, hand grenades, “fire balls,” grape and canister, brickbats, and masonry fragments. At a signal from the fort, the Confederate gunboat Chicora steamed out from the harbor and opened fire; Fort Moultrie “fired like a devil.”
From the outer boats, the marines replied rapidly for a few minutes. Some of the sailors ashore fired a few shots from their revolvers, but most sought refuge in the embrasures or breaches in the wall. It was all over in 20 minutes. Most of the boats did not even touch shore. The Federal loss was 124 killed, wounded, and captured, and five boats were taken. A similar expedition from Gillmore’s command was detained by low tide in a creek west of Morris Island. Service rivalry had prevented active cooperation that might have resulted in victory.
Except for a six-day bombardment of “minor” proportions late in September, Fort Sumter was free of attack for almost two months. Damages sustained by the monitors in the Morris Island operation, as much as Fort Moultrie’s increased firepower and the fear of channel obstructions (a menace which later proved to be greatly exaggerated), made Admiral Dahlgren reluctant to make another move at this time. General Gillmore, engaged now in rebuilding and rearming the captured Confederate batteries on Cummings Point, thought he had accomplished his part of the operation. In his opinion, Fort Sumter was effectively reduced; its actual seizure and occupation would be costly and unnecessary; besides, the reinforcements needed for such an undertaking were not available anyway. Indeed, with the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg and the defeat of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army at Gettysburg, Charleston had suddenly become much less important. Gillmore contemplated no further offensive operations by his forces.
On October 26, having learned that the Confederates were remounting some of Sumter’s guns, Gillmore resumed the bombardment. For the next 12 days, the concentration of fire was comparable to the great bombardment of the preceding August. But now, with the new batteries on Cummings Point in operation and the range shortened to less than a mile, the effect was far greater. For the first time, 16 heavy mortars were in use—two of them 8½-ton pieces (13-inch bore) throwing 200-pound projectiles. Their sharp, plunging fire was added to that of 12 Parrott rifles—the types already used so effectively against the fort—and one powerful Columbiad. In addition, two monitors, with guns “equal to a dozen” Parrotts, crossed fire with Gillmore’s artillery.
Sumter’s sea front (right flank), upright and relatively unscathed till now, was breached for nearly half its length. The ramparts and arches of its upper casemates were cut down and the interior barracks demolished. The accumulated debris made ascent easy inside and out. Through the breach, the Federal guns took the channel fronts in reverse. Exposed to direct fire for the first time, they were soon cut and jagged. Still, the gorge ruin remained much the same; to Admiral Dahlgren, that “heap of rubbish” looked invincible.
Night and day throughout November and into December, Gillmore’s batteries, assisted occasionally by the monitors, maintained a slow fire against the fort. Sumter could respond with merely “harmless musketry,” but its defenders seemed “snug in the ruins.” And if Sumter was without cannons, Confederate batteries on James and Sullivans Islands kept up an irritating counterfire.
Sumter Under Fire
Fort Sumter, from the northern tip of Morris Island
By August 23, 1863, when the photograph was taken, General Gillmore’s siege guns had been firing at Fort Sumter continuously for a week in what came to be known as the “First Great Bombardment.” By then, according to Gen. J. W. Turner, Gillmore’s chief of artillery, “The demolition of the fort ... was complete so far as its offensive powers were considered. Every gun upon the parapet was either dismounted or seriously damaged. The parapet could be seen in many places both on the sea and channel faces to be completely torn away from the terre-plein. The place, in fine, was a ruin, and effectually disabled for any immediate defense of the harbor of Charleston.”
General Turner’s assessment of Fort Sumter’s “demolition” proved premature. Thanks to the efforts of its garrison over the next several months, the fort was transformed, according to chief engineer Maj. John Johnson, from “a shapeless pile of shattered walls and casemates, showing here and there the guns disabled and half buried in splintered wrecks of carriages, its mounds of rubbish fairly reeking with the smoke and smell of powder, ... into a powerful earthwork, impregnable to assault, and even supporting the other works at the entrance of Charleston harbor with six guns of the heaviest caliber.”
The damage caused to the fort’s interior during Gillmore’s “First Great Bombardment” is evident in the remarkable “action” photograph, taken by Charleston photographer George S. Cook on September 8, 1863, just as a shell from the Federal ironclad Weehawken burst on the rubble-strewn parade ground during Admiral Dahlgren’s naval assault on the harbor batteries.
Maj. John A. Johnson, commanding engineer at Fort Sumter during the 1863-65 Confederate occupation.
On November 6, the Confederate engineer at Fort Sumter, Maj. John Johnson, reported that while the height of the mass of the fort was “diminishing visibly on the sides away from the city, when it gets down to the lower casemates it will have become so thick from accumulated debris as to resist further battering.” Two weeks later, he found the fort stronger than ever, with casualties surprisingly low—only two men were killed in the August bombardment and only 22 more since the start of the present one; 118 had been wounded. Johnson was not fearful of being driven out by the big Federal guns, but rather “exposure to assault from barges at night.”
In mid-November such an attack seemed to be forthcoming. During the early hours of the 18th, the defenders of the fort had four distinct alarms as small boats approached within hailing distance; “all hands out each time and expecting a fight.” On the following night, a force estimated at 250 men approached within 300 yards of the fort, only to be driven off by the muskets of the aroused garrison. This was not, however, a real attack but only a reconnaissance ordered by Gillmore “with a view to compel the garrison to show its strength.” Having done that, he would now wait for the Navy to make the next move.
But Admiral Dahlgren could not move until the repairs on the monitors were finished, and as late as January 1864 these still were not completed. Even so, confronted with reports of greatly strengthened harbor fortifications and a growing concern over the exact nature of the harbor obstructions, he was reluctant to move without additional monitors. Defeat was always possible, and defeat for the Union’s only ironclad squadron might have serious consequences—not only for the blockade and Gillmore’s command on Morris Island, but for operations elsewhere along the coast. Nevertheless, substantial advantages had already been gained: the blockade at Charleston was tighter with Morris Island in Federal hands. To all this, the Navy Department agreed. Elsewhere, while Dahlgren and Gillmore marked time, the war gathered momentum. In November 1863, the North won decisively at Chattanooga.
The additional monitors, always promised, never seemed to arrive. On December 5, General Gillmore stopped the bombardment of Fort Sumter begun 41 days earlier. There seemed no great advantage in continuing, and it required considerable ammunition. He had made his last sustained effort against the fort. On only four other days in December did he fire any rounds at all. During the four months he remained in command, the firing was intermittent, never more than “minor” in character. Meanwhile, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s forthcoming operations in Virginia required all available troops. On May 1, 1864, Gillmore departed for Fort Monroe with 18,000 picked men and quantities of valuable matériel.
Dahlgren’s much-needed monitors never did arrive (Grant needed those, too) and, with the monitor force he did have reduced to six by the foundering of the Weehawken in December, further offensive operations against Charleston seemed completely out of the question. In June, the ironclad frigate New Ironsides was withdrawn to the north.
In the preceding December, Fort Sumter had been an almost chaotic ruin. But with the fort practically left alone during the months immediately following, the garrison gradually restored order from chaos. The parade ground, excavated well below high-water level to provide sand-filling, was cleared, drained, and partially rebuilt. Trim ranks of gabions (wicker baskets filled with sand) bolstered the sloping debris of the walls on the interior. The three-gun battery in the lower right face was lined with logs and planks, 10 feet deep, and revetted more thoroughly in the rear. In casemates on the left flank another three-gun battery was created. Through the disordered debris of the left and right faces, the garrison tunneled a 275-foot timbered gallery connecting the two batteries and fort headquarters in the left flank. And in from the rubble of the sea front, the garrison built a loopholed timber blockhouse to cover the parade ground in the event of further assault. In May, Capt. John C. Mitchel, son of the Irish patriot, relieved Lt. Col. Stephen Elliott in command.
The onset of summer, 1864, brought one more attempt to take Fort Sumter; likewise another officer of the original Fort Sumter garrison came into the operation. Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, engineer of the fort in April 1861, had succeeded to Gillmore’s command on May 26 and was convinced that “with proper arrangements” the fort could easily be taken “at any time.” The proper arrangements included special light-draught steamers and 1,000-man “assaulting arks” equipped with 51-foot scaling ladders and elevated towers for sharpshooters. Though initial War Department reaction was cool, Foster went ahead with a preliminary operation to complete the demolition of the fort. “Yankee ingenuity” might succeed where routine operations had failed or been judged too costly.
The last two commanders of Fort Sumter:
Capt. John C. Mitchel, who was killed in July 1864 during the third great bombardment after commanding only two months and 16 days.
Capt. Thomas A. Huguenin, who remained in charge until Charleston and Fort Sumter were evacuated in February 1865.
On July 7, 1864, Foster’s batteries opened a sustained bombardment against the ruin of Fort Sumter. During the remainder of that month, an average of 350 rounds daily were hurled at the beleaguered fort. In some respects, this was the heaviest bombardment Fort Sumter had yet received. Although the gorge ruin was wasted away at one point to within 20 feet of the water, and the shattered sea front was still further reduced, the right face remained erect, its three-gun battery intact; likewise most of the left flank. To Admiral Dahlgren, as late as July 21, the work seemed “nearly impregnable.” Debris added to debris, feverish work day and night, and thousands of bags of sand brought from the city by night actually made the fort stronger than ever. If a casemate were breached, it was speedily filled; if the slopes of the ruin invited assault, a bristling array of wooden pikes and barbed-wire entanglements were provided; and there were always the muskets of the 300-man garrison.
The fire slackened in August; Foster’s supply of ammunition dwindled, and his requisitions for more went unfulfilled. A scheme for “shaking down” the fort walls by floating down large “powder rafts” failed miserably. Mid-August brought final War Department refusal to supply light-draft steamers; the end of August, sharp disapproval of Foster’s “assaulting arks.” Meanwhile, Dahlgren had been unwilling to cooperate in an alternate plan of assault and Foster himself was ordered to remain strictly on the defensive. He was also called upon to ship north most of his remaining ammunition and four more regiments of troops to be used in Grant’s operations against Richmond.
On September 4, the bombardment begun on July 7 came to an end. In those 61 days, another 14,666 rounds had been hurled against the fort. Sixteen of the garrison had been killed, 65 wounded. On July 20 Captain Mitchel fell mortally wounded. Capt. Thomas A. Huguenin succeeded him that night.
Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, who replaced Gillmore as commander of land operations at Charleston. Foster had been Anderson’s engineer officer at Fort Sumter during the 1861 bombardment.
The last great bombardment of Fort Sumter had taken place. The firing was no more than desultory after September 1864; less than a hundred rounds were hurled at the fort in the months of December and January; none at all in February. During the autumn months it was all Foster’s batteries could do to make a reasonable defense of Morris Island, let alone carry on any offensive operations.
In February 1865 the long stalemate came to an end as Gen. William T. Sherman marched north from Savannah through the interior of South Carolina, slicing between the remnants of Gen. John B. Hood’s Confederate army on the west and the small Confederate force remaining along the coast. On the 17th, with Sherman in Columbia, Fort Sumter and the other Confederate fortifications in Charleston harbor were quietly evacuated. At 9 o’clock on the morning of the 18th, the United States flag was once more raised over Fort Sumter. The fortunes of war had accomplished what 3,500 tons of metal, a fleet of ironclads, and thousands of men had failed to do.
The 1865 Flag Raising
On April 14, 1865, Robert Anderson, now a retired brigadier general, returned to Fort Sumter to raise again the flag he had pulled down four years before. If he was surprised at the shattered appearance of the fort (shown in Seth Eastman’s companion painting to the one reproduced on pages [4]-5), he said nothing, speaking only of the “act of duty” he had come there to perform. “I thank God that I have lived to see this day,” he told the throng of spectators and distinguished guests. Then, amid loud applause, he hoisted “to its proper place this flag which floated here during peace, before the first act of this cruel Rebellion.”
As the flag rose to the top of the staff and was caught by the breeze from the ocean, “there was one tumultuous shout.” The guns of the harbor then thundered in salute. “We raise our fathers’ banner, that it may bring back better blessings than those of old,” Henry Ward Beecher told the crowd, “that it may cast out the devil of discord; that it may restore lawful government and a prosperity purer and more enduring than that which it protected before; that it may win parted friends from their alienation; that it may inspire hope and inaugurate universal liberty; ... that it may heal all jealousies, unite all policies, inspire a new national life, compact our strength, purify our principles, ennoble our national ambitions, and make this people great and strong ... for the peace of the world.”
That night, there were fireworks and a full-dress dinner at the Charleston Hotel hosted by General Gillmore. Speeches and toasts followed one another in quick succession. One of the most moderate and, as events proved, ironic toasts, was given by General Anderson. “I beg you, now,” he began, “that you will join me in drinking the health of ... the man who, when elected President of the United States, was compelled to reach the seat of government without an escort, but a man who now could travel all over our country with millions of hands and hearts to sustain him. I give you the good, the great, the honest man, Abraham Lincoln.” Less than an hour later, Abraham Lincoln lay dying on the floor of a Washington theater, an assassin’s bullet in his brain.