Copyright Detroit Publishing Co.
FORT SUMTER, A PILE OF STONE ON A SANDY SHOAL
Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, in her delightful reminiscences of Charleston, writes:
Doubt and delay were gone. Then came the call to arms.... January, February, and March were so full of crowded life that they seemed an eternity, yet one dreaded lest eternity should end. End it did when one night at eleven o’clock seven guns thundered out over the town and every man sprang up, seized his rifle and ran to the wharves. It was the signal that the relieving fleet (from the north) was on its way south, and that the whole reserve must hurry to the islands.
During all this time Fort Sumter had been supplied with provisions and necessaries by the citizens of Charleston.
When Major Anderson in command at Fort Sumter accepted Beauregard’s terms of surrender and saluted the new flag, he was conveyed, with all the honors of war, in the steamer Isabel to the United States fleet which had lain idle in the offing.
From this time until the end of the Civil War Charleston was in a state of siege. There was a short period of preparation on both sides before the Federal fleet appeared, November, 1861, outside the quaint old city. The city maintained its integrity complete against attacks by water, and finally fell to a move in force by land in the last year of the war, when the defenders of Charleston were withdrawn and all of the men of the remnants of the armies of the Confederacy were being concentrated for one last desperate protest against the inevitable.
After the Civil War Fort Sumter was repaired and strengthened and is still a seat of military power as a sub-post of Fort Moultrie.
To reach Fort Moultrie one goes from Charleston by ferry to the northern side of the Cooper River and takes a trolley which leads seaward along the coast across an inlet to Sullivan’s Island, which has become a popular summer place with many people of Charleston.