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.