I then called on General Ripley, who commands the garrison and forts of Charleston. He is a jovial character, very fond of the good things of this life; but it is said that he never allows this propensity to interfere with his military duties, in the performance of which he displays both zeal and talent. He has the reputation of being an excellent artillery officer, and although by birth a Northerner, he is a red-hot and indefatigable rebel. I believe he wrote a book about the Mexican war, and after leaving the old army, he was a good deal in England, connected with the small-arms factory at Enfield, and other enterprises of the same sort. Nearly all the credit of the efficiency of the Charleston fortifications is due to him. And notwithstanding his Northern birth and occasional rollicking habits, he is generally popular.
I then called on Mr Robertson, a merchant, for whom I had brought a letter of introduction from England. This old gentleman took me for a drive in his buggy at 6 p.m. It appears that at this time of year the country outside the city is quite pestilential, for when we reached the open, Mr Robertson pointed to a detached house and said, "Now, I am as fond of money as any Jew, yet I wouldn't sleep in that house for one night if you gave it to me for doing so."
I had intended to have visited Mr Blake, an English gentleman for whom I had a letter, on his Combahee plantation, but Mr Robertson implored me to abandon this idea. Mr Robertson was full of the disasters which had resulted from a recent Yankee raid of the Combahee river. It appears that a vast amount of property had been destroyed and slaves carried off. This morning I saw a poor old planter in Mr Robertson's office, who had been suddenly and totally ruined by this raid. The raiders consisted principally of Northern armed negroes, and as they met with no Southern whites to resist them, they were able to effect their depredations with total impunity. It seems that a good deal of the land about Charleston belongs either to Blakes or Heywards. Mr Blake lost thirty negroes in the last raid, but he has lost since the beginning of the war about 150.
Mr Robertson afterwards took me to see Mrs ——, who is Mr Walter Blake's daughter. To me, who had roughed it for ten weeks to such an extent, Charleston appeared most comfortable and luxurious. But its inhabitants must, to say the least, be suffering great inconvenience. The lighting and paving of the city had gone to the bad completely. Most of the shops were shut up. Those that were open contained but very few goods, and those were at famine prices. I tried to buy a black scarf, but I couldn't find such an article in all Charleston.
An immense amount of speculation in blockade-running was going on, and a great deal of business is evidently done in buying and selling negroes, for the papers are full of advertisements of slave auctions. That portion of the city destroyed by the great fire presents the appearance of a vast wilderness in the very centre of the town, no attempt having been made towards rebuilding it; this desert space looks like the Pompeian ruins, and extends, Mr Robertson says, for a mile in length by half a mile in width. Nearly all the distance between the Mills House hotel and Charleston hotel is in this desolate state. The fire began quite by accident, but the violent wind which suddenly arose rendered all attempts to stop the flames abortive. The deserted state of the wharves is melancholy—the huge placards announcing lines of steamers to New York, New Orleans, and to different parts of the world, still remain, and give one an idea of what a busy scene they used to be. The people, however, all seem happy, contented, and determined. Both the great hotels are crowded; and well dressed, handsome ladies are plentiful; the fare is good, and the charge at the Charleston hotel is eight dollars a day.
9th June (Tuesday).—A Captain Feilden came to call upon me at 9 a.m. He is an Englishman, and formerly served in the 42d Highlanders. He is now in the Confederate army, and is on the staff of General Beauregard's army. I remember his brother quite well at Sandhurst. Captain Feilden accompanied me to General Ripley's office, and at 12 o'clock the latter officer took us in his boat to inspect Fort Sumter. Our party consisted of an invalid General Davis, a congress man named Nutt, Captain Feilden, the general, and myself. We reached Fort Sumter after a pull of about three-quarters of an hour.[46] This now celebrated fort is a pentagonal work built of red brick. It has two tiers of casemates, besides a heavy barbette battery. Its walls are twelve feet thick at the piers, and six feet thick at the embrasures. It rises sheer out of the water, and is apparently situated in the centre of the bay, but on its side towards James Island the water is extremely shallow. It mounts sixty-eight guns, of a motley but efficient description. Ten-inch columbiads predominate, and are perhaps the most useful. They weigh 14,000 lb. (125 cwt.), throw a solid shot weighing 128 lb., and are made to traverse with the greatest ease by means of Yates's system of cogwheels. There are also eight-inch columbiads, rifled forty-two pounders, and Brook guns to throw flat-headed projectiles (General Ripley told me that these Brook guns, about which so much is said, differ but little from the Blakely cannon); also there are parrot guns and Dahlgrens; in fact, a general assortment of every species of ordnance except Whitworths and Armstrongs. But the best gun in the fort is a fine new eleven-inch gun, which had just been fished up from the wreck of the Keokuk; the sister gun from the same wreck is at ——. The garrison consists of 350 enlisted soldiers under Colonel Rhett. They are called Confederate States regulars, and certainly they saluted in a more soldierlike way than the ordinary volunteers. A great proportion of them are foreigners.
Fort Sumter now shows but little signs of the battering it underwent from the ironclads eight weeks ago. The two faces exposed to fire have been patched up so that large pieces of masonry have a newer appearance than the mass of the building. The guns have been removed from the casemates on the eastern face, and the lower tier of casemates has been filled up with earth to give extra strength, and prevent the balls from coming right through into the interior of the work, which happened at the last attack. There is consequently a deep hole in the parade inside Fort Sumter, from which the earth had been taken to fill up these casemates. The angles of Sumter are being strengthened outside by stone buttresses. Some of the cheeks of the upper embrasures have been faced with blocks of iron three feet long, eight inches thick, and twelve inches wide. I saw the effect of a heavy shot on one of these blocks which had been knocked right away, and had fallen in two pieces on the rocks below, but it had certainly saved the embrasure from further injury that time. I saw some solid fifteen-inch shot which had been fired by the enemy: they weigh 425 lb. I was told that several fifteen-inch shell had stuck in the walls and burst there, tearing away great flakes of masonry, and making holes two feet deep at the extreme. None of the ironclads would approach nearer than nine hundred yards, and the Keokuk, which was the only one that came thus close, got out of order in five minutes, and was completely disabled in a quarter of an hour. She sank on the following morning. Solid ten-inch shot and seven-inch flat-heads were used upon her. Ripley said he would give a great deal for some more eleven-inch guns, but he can't get them except by such chances as the Keokuk.
The fight only lasted two hours and twenty-five minutes. Fort Sumter bore nearly the whole weight of the attack, assisted in a slight degree by Moultrie. Only one man was killed, which was caused by the fall of the flagstaff. The Confederates were unable to believe until some time afterwards the real amount of the damage they had inflicted; nor did they discover until next day that the affair was a serious attack, and not a reconnaissance. General Ripley spoke with the greatest confidence of being able to repulse any other attack of the same sort.
Colonel Rhett, the commandant, entertained us with luncheon in one of the casemates. He is a handsome and agreeable man, besides being a zealous officer. He told me that one of the most efficient of his subordinates was Captain Mitchell, son to the so-called Irish patriot, who is editor of one of the Richmond newspapers.