Trample them, clod by clod,
Stamp them in dust amain!
The cuspids, cruent and red,
That the Monster, Freedom, shed
On the sacred, strong Slave-Sod—
They never shall rise again!
Never?—what hideous growth
Is sprouting through clod and clay?
What Terror starts to the day?
A crop of steel, on our oath!
How the burnished stamens glance!—
Spike, and anther, and blade,
How they burst from the bloody shade,
And spindle to spear and lance!
There are tassels of blood-red Maize—
How the horrible Harvest grows!
'Tis sabres that glint and daze—
'Tis bayonets all ablaze
Uprearing in dreadful rows!
For one that we buried there,
A thousand are come to air!
Ever, by door-stone and hearth,
They break from the angry earth—
And out of the crimson sand,
Where the cold white Fang was laid,
Rises a terrible Shade,
The Wraith of a sleepless Brand!
And our hearts wax strange and chill,
With an ominous shudder and thrill,
Even here, on the strong Slave-Sod,
Lest, haply, we be found
(Ah, dread no brave hath drowned!)
Fighting against Great God.
Henry Howard Brownell.
Heavy siege batteries were at once erected by the Union forces and on August 17, 1863, a terrific bombardment began against Sumter and Wagner, and continued uninterruptedly. Ten days later Sumter had been reduced to a shapeless mass of ruins, and Fort Wagner was captured soon afterwards, but the city itself still stood unshaken.
TWILIGHT ON SUMTER[11]
[1863]
Still and dark along the sea
Sumter lay;
A light was overhead,
As from burning cities shed,
And the clouds were battle-red,
Far away.
Not a solitary gun
Left to tell the fort had won
Or lost the day!
Nothing but the tattered rag
Of the drooping rebel flag,
And the sea-birds screaming round it in their play.