I first of all hammered his head against the floor, but the floor had the worst of it; then I kicked his shins (the only vulnerable part of a nigger), but it was of no use; so pouring the contents of a water jug over him, in the hope that I might thus cause awful dreams to disturb his slumbers, I left him, voting myself a muff for leaving the key in my box.
Having letters of introduction to some of General Beauregard's staff, I made my way to headquarters, where I met with the greatest courtesy and kindness. An orderly was sent with me to show me the top of the tower, a position that commanded a famous view of the besieging army, the blockading squadron, and all the defences of the place. A battery had just been placed by the enemy (consisting of five Parrot guns of heavy calibre) five miles from the town, and that day had opened fire for the first time. At that enormous range the shell occasionally burst over or fell into the city, doing, however, little damage. The elevation of the guns must have been unusually great. I am told that every one of them burst after a week's, or thereabouts, firing. Poor Fort Sumter was nearly silenced after many months' hammering, but its brave defenders remained in it to the last, and it was not till a few days before Charleston was abandoned that they gave it up. At the time I speak of the whole of the western beach was in the hands of the enemy, Battery Wagner having succumbed after one of the most gallant defences on record. While it remained in the hands of the Southerners it assisted Fort Sumter, inasmuch as from its position it kept the enemy at a distance, but after its capture, or rather destruction, the latter fort was exposed to a tremendous fire from ships and batteries, and its solid front was terribly crumbled.
Surrounded, however, with water as it was, it would have been most difficult to take by assault; and from what I could learn, certain destruction would have met any body of men who had attempted it latterly. There it stood, sulkily firing a shot or shell now and then, more out of defiance than anything else. The blockading, or rather bombarding, squadron was lying pretty near to it on the western side of the entrance to the harbour; but on the east side, formidable batteries belonging to the Southerners kept them at a respectable distance. Blockade-running into Charleston was quite at an end at the time I am writing about. Not that I think the cruisers could have kept vessels from getting in, but for the reason that the harbour was a perfect network of torpedoes and infernal machines (the passage through which was only known to a few persons), placed by the Southerners to prevent the Northern fleet from approaching the city.
Having had a good look at the positions of the attacking and defending parties, I went down from the tower and paid a visit to a battery where two Blakely guns of heavy calibre, that had lately been run through the blockade in the well-known 'Sumter' (now the 'Gibraltar'), were mounted. These guns threw a shot of 720 lbs. weight, and were certainly masterpieces of design and execution. Unhappily, proper instructions for loading had not accompanied them from England, and on the occasion of the first round being fired from one of them, the gun not being properly loaded, cracked at the breech, and was rendered useless; the other, however, did good service, throwing shot with accuracy at great distances. I saw much that was interesting here, but more able pens than mine have already described fully the details of that long siege, where on one hand all modern appliances of war that ingenuity could conceive or money purchase were put into the hands of brave and determined soldiers; on the other hand were bad arms, bad powder, bad provisions, bad everything; desperate courage and unheard-of self-denial being all the Southerners had to depend upon.
These poor Southerners never began to open their eyes to the hopelessness of their cause till Sherman's almost unopposed march showed the weakness of the whole country. Even strangers like myself were so carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment, that we shut our eyes to what should have been clearly manifest to us. We could not believe that men who were fighting and enduring as these men were could ever be beaten. Some of their leaders must have foreseen that the catastrophe was coming months before it occurred; but, if they did so, they were afraid to make their opinion public.
On returning to the hotel, I found it full of people of all classes indulging in tobacco (the only solace left them) in every form. It is all very well to say that smoking is a vile habit; so it may be, when indulged in by luxurious fellows who eat and drink their full every day, and are rarely without a cigar or pipe in their mouths; it may, perhaps, be justly said that such men abuse the use of the glorious narcotic supplied by Providence for men's consolation under difficulties. But when a man has hard mental and bodily work, and barely enough food to support nature, water being his only drink, then give him tobacco, and he will thoroughly appreciate it. Besides, it will do him real good. I think that at any time its use in moderation is harmless and often beneficial, but under the circumstances I speak of it is a luxury without price.
During the evening I met at the hotel a Confederate naval officer who was going to attempt that night to carry havoc among the blockading squadron by means of a cigar-shaped vessel of a very curious description.
This vessel was a screw steamer of sixty feet in length, with eight feet beam. She lay, before being prepared for the important service on which she was going, with about two feet of her hull showing above the water, at each end of which, on the shoulder as it were of the cigar, was a small hatch or opening, just large enough to allow a man to pop through it: from her bows projected a long iron outrigger, at the end of which there was fixed a torpedo that would explode on coming into contact with a vessel's side.
When the crew were on board, and had gone down into the vessel through one of the hatches above mentioned, the said hatches were firmly closed, and by arrangements that were made from the inside the vessel was sunk about six inches below the water, leaving merely a small portion of the funnel showing. Steam and smoke being got rid of below water, the vessel was invisible, torpedo and all being immersed.
The officer having thus described his vessel, wished me good-night, and started on his perilous enterprise. I met him again next evening quietly smoking his pipe. I eagerly asked him what he had done, when he told me with the greatest sang-froid that he had gone on board his vessel with a crew of seven men; that everything for a time had gone like clockwork; they were all snug below with hatches closed, the vessel was sunk to the required depth, and was steadily steaming down the harbour, apparently perfectly water-tight, when suddenly the sea broke through the foremost hatch and she went to the bottom immediately. He said he did not know how he escaped. He imagined that after the vessel had filled he had managed to escape through the aperture by which the water got in; all the rest of the poor fellows were drowned. Not that my friend seemed to think anything of that, for human life was very little thought of in those times. This vessel was afterwards got up, when the bodies of her crew were still in her hold. I imagined that the vessel contained sufficient air to enable her to remain under water two or three hours, or maybe some method was practised by which air could be introduced by the funnel; at all events, had she been successful on that night, she would undoubtedly have caused a good deal of damage and loss to the blockading squadron, who were constantly harassed by all sorts of infernal machines, torpedoes, fire-vessels, &c., which were sent out against them by ingenious Southerners, whose fertile imaginations were constantly conceiving some new invention.