Bomb-proof of Fort Wagner.
From a photograph by Haas & Peale.
On August 23d five monitors opened on Sumter at a range of 800 yards. Dahlgren wrote to the department that morning: “I propose passing Sumter into the harbor, if the obstructions are not of such a nature as to prevent it,” and adds that “the gorge of Sumter has been completely ruined” by Union batteries on shore, of which one of four guns was worked by naval men. But he did not make the attempt to pass the fort, and never did.
Battery Hayes: Eighteen-inch Parrott Rifle—Dismounted Breaching Battery against Sumter.
From a photograph by Haas & Peale.
Meantime Gillmore had been pushing forward the parallels—rolling waves of sand toward Fort Wagner, and the Confederates were hard pressed, but a truce for an exchange of prisoners (the Union forces did not know how badly the Confederates were pressed) gave the garrison a chance to rebuild their defences. On September 2d Dahlgren reports that the monitors were within 500 yards of Sumter during the night before. “The firing was steadily maintained.” Sumter returned two shots only. “Our fire was also directed at the floating obstructions that had been reported from day to day.” “The vessels were engaged five hours.” Of night attacks Beauregard, the Confederate general, said:
“This plan of attack could have been repeated every night until the walls of the fort should have crumbled under the enormous missiles which made holes two and a half feet deep in the walls, and shattered the latter in an alarming manner. I could not then have repaired during the day the damages of the night, and I am confident now, as I was then, that Fort Sumter, if thus attacked, must have been disabled.”
