Peculiarities of American Cities

by Willard W. Glazier

Reaching Charleston and its jail yard September twelfth, 1864, on the twenty-ninth I was transferred to the Roper Hospital, having given my parole that I would not attempt to escape. The quarters here were so much more comfortable that it was almost like a transition from hell to heaven. Leaving behind me the filthiness of the jail yard, and my bed there on the chill, bare ground, where I had protection against neither heat nor cold, storm nor sunshine, to be permitted the freedom of the beautiful garden of the hospital, and to sleep even upon the hard floor of the piazza, were luxuries before unenjoyed in my experience of southern prisons. And here the Sisters of Charity, those angels among women, did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the sick, and to add to the comfort of us all. Their ministrations were bestowed indiscriminately on Rebels and Federals, with a charity as broad and boundless as true religion.

On October fifth we were ordered to leave Charleston, and were sent, in the foulest of cattle cars, to Columbia, the Capital of the State. We left Charleston without a regret. It was the breeding place of the rankest treason, the cradle of the Rebellion, and the scene of untold cruelties to Union prisoners. At the time of our brief visit to the city, it was undergoing all the horrors of an actual siege. About one-third of its territory had been destroyed by fire during the early part of the war, caused by shells thrown from the Union batteries on Morris Island. This portion of the city was deserted by all its inhabitants save the negroes, who, during every brief cessation in the bombardment, flocked in and took possession, rent free, to scatter as quickly when one or more of them had been killed by the sudden appearance and explosion of shells in this quarter. The balance of the city was forsaken by non-combatants, and the blockade had put an end to all her commerce. The quiet industries of peace had given place to all the turmoil of war. Her streets were filled with military, while the boom of the distant batteries, the whiz of the flying shells, and the noise of their explosion, were daily and familiar sounds.

During the four years of the war, Charleston was one of the chief points of Federal attack, though it remained in possession of the Confederate forces until the beginning of 1865. These were four terrible years to the city. Yet her sufferings she had brought upon herself. The first open and public movement in favor of the dissolution of the Union was made in that city. South Carolina was the first to call a State convention, and to secede from the Union. This convention was held at Columbia, the Capital of the State, but was adjourned to Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession was unanimously passed on the twentieth of December, 1860. Fort Sumter, which was one of the largest forts in Charleston, a massive fortress of solid masonry, standing on an island commanding the principal entrance, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, was in command of Major Robert Anderson, with a garrison of eighty men. On the twenty-seventh of December he ran up the stars and stripes. Governor Pickens immediately demanded a surrender of the fort, which was promptly refused. Early on Friday morning, April twelfth, 1861, the initial gun of the terrible four years' war was fired by the Rebel forces from the howitzer battery on James Island, west of Sumter. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan Island, on the northeast, the gun battery at Cumming's Point, the northwest extremity of Morris Island, and other batteries and fortifications which the Confederates had seized and appropriated to their own use, all followed in a deadly rain of shells upon Sumter. The firing was kept up for thirty-five hours, and Sumter made a vigorous defence, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the supplies exhausted, and the magazine surrounded by flames, when Major Anderson accepted the terms of capitulation offered by General Beauregard.

Upon the surrender of the Fort, which was received as a good omen by the South, troops began to pour into the city, so that by the sixteenth of the same month as many as ten thousand had arrived. The blockade of the port was commenced on the tenth of May, and continued until the close of the war. In the latter part of 1861 an attempt was made by the Federal government to seal up the channel of the harbor with sunken ships, to prevent the egress of privateers. On the twenty-first of December seventeen vessels were sunk, in three or four rows, across the channel. But this attempt at blockade proved a failure. The current washed some of them away, and many passages in a water front of six miles were left unobserved, and more vessels ran the blockade and reached the city, than at any other southern port.

On the tenth of December, 1861, a fire broke out in the city, which destroyed nearly all its public buildings, banks and insurance offices, and several churches, besides many dwellings, reducing thousands to homelessness and the extremity of want. The loss occasioned by this conflagration was estimated at ten millions of dollars.

In 1863, the women, children and other non-combatants were ordered out of the city, and free transportation, food and lodgings were furnished those unable to pay for them. Morris Island had been captured by the Federal Army, who used it as a point of attack against Sumter and the city. Its shells had wrought destruction in all parts of the city, especially in its lower portions. On February seventeenth, 1865, Charleston, which had withstood all attacks from the seaward, capitulated to the Union forces, Columbia having been captured by Sherman.

The history of Charleston goes back to earliest colonial times. In 1671 a few persons located themselves on Ashley River, at Old Charleston. But in 1680 this settlement was abandoned, and the foundations of the present city laid, several miles nearer the sea. The whole country, up to 1671, between the thirtieth and thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, was called Carolina, having received the name in honor of Charles IX, of France. In that year the division was made between the Northern and Southern provinces. In 1685 the young settlement received a considerable influx of French Huguenot refugees.

During the early part of the eighteenth century the war of Queen Anne against France and Spain greatly disturbed the young colony; and a little later the Indians threatened its existence. All the inhabitants of the region took refuge at Charleston, which was vigorously defended.

In 1700, the same year that Kidd was captured and taken to England, no less then seven pirates were secured, and executed at Charleston. Subsequently others shared the same fate.

GARDEN AT MOUNT PLEASANT, OPPOSITE CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.