 | Memoirs of the war of secession |  |
EXTRACT FROM GENERAL RIPLEY'S REPORT
Continuing Narrative of Siege from 7th September, 1863.
". . . September 7th. The enemy occupied Battery Wagner
about daylight, and was opened upon by Batteries Simkins and
Cheves and Fort Moultrie with the works adjacent.
"Soon after Admiral Dalgreen, commanding enemy's fleet, sent
a demand to Major Stephen Elliott, commanding Fort Sumter,
for a surrender of that post. Major Elliott declined, meantime
referring the matter to the headquarters of the district. Under
instructions from headquarters of the department, Admiral Dalgreen
was informed that he could have Fort Sumter when he
could take and hold it.
"About 6 p. m., the Ironsides and five monitors came up the
channel and opened fire on Fort Sumter and the batteries on Sullivan's
Island, which was promptly replied to by our guns and
with some effect until it was too dark to observe the results. The
enemy kept up his fire until about 9 o'clock, doing but little
damage to the works. Lieutenant E. A. Ervin, First South Carolina
Infantry, was killed at Battery Beauregard.
"September 8th. On the morning of the 8th, a monitor, supposed
to be the Weehawken, was observed aground in the channel
slow fire was opened upon her from a treble-banded Brooke gun
and a 10-inch columbiad from Sullivan's Island and such guns as
could be brought to bear from Fort Johnson. The endeavor was
made to strike her below her armor, which was out of water at
low tide. She was struck several times below the usual water
lines, and about 9 o'clock the Ironsides and five monitors came to
her assistance, engaging the forts and batteries at distances ranging
from 800 to 1,500 yards, keeping up a very heavy cannonade.
A shell from the Weehawken struck and disabled an 8-inch
columbiad in Fort Moultrie, and glancing burst near a service
magazine which was protected by a heavy traverse throwing
incendiary contents into and exploding the magazine, killing
sixteen and wounding twelve men of Captain R. Press Smith's
company, First South Carolina Infantry. This disaster interrupted
the practice but little, for Captain Bennett's company
relieved Captain Smith's under a heavy cannonade, and an accurate
and deliberate fire was maintained against the enemy from
all the batteries on the island for about five hours, when the
enemy withdrew much cut up and disabled. From personal
observation, I take pleasure in commending the conduct and
practice of the officers and men engaged in Colonel Butler's regiment.
The effect on the ironclads I believe to have been greater
than on the 7th April, and since the action but one monitor has
fired a gun, and their number has been decreasing; four only are
now in view. Besides the casualties from the explosion, three men
and two officers were killed—Captain Wardlaw and Lieutenant
DeSaussure; and fourteen men were wounded at Fort Moultrie.
"Having met with but little success in the cannonade of the
Sullivan's Island batteries, the enemy's naval commander next
made an attempt to take possession of Fort Sumter, and at 1
o'clock on the morning of the 9th attacked that fort with a
fleet of from thirty to forty barges. Major Elliott caused his
fire to be reserved until the enemy was within a few yards of
the southern and eastern faces upon which the landing was
attempted. He was then received with a close fire of musketry;
hand grenades and fragments of epaulement were thrown over
on the heads of his men, demoralizing and completely repulsing
him. The crews near the fort sought refuge in the recesses and
rapidly away. The gunboat `Chicora,' the Sullivan's Island
batteries and Fort Johnson opened a fire enfilading the faces of
Sumter as soon as the signal was made, cutting up the retreating
barges, of which several were seen floating capsized and disabled.
Next morning Major Elliott succeeded in securing five boats, five
stands of colors, twelve officers and one hundred and nine men,
including two officers and nineteen men wounded.
"The prisoners reported the attacking force four hundred
strong. It was probably larger, and the enemy's loss was
undoubtedly larger than that portion which fell into our hands
and under our observation. Amongst the captured colors was a
worn and torn garrison flag, reported by some of the prisoners
as that which Major Anderson was permitted to take from the
fort on the occasion of his being compelled to surrender it in
April, 1861. This had been brought to hoist and to be made the
subject of boast had the assault succeeded. Whether it was
really the flag in question or not, it would doubtless have been
so asserted. . . . The gallant conduct of Major Steven Elliott,
commanding Fort Sumter, and of his garrison, the Charleston
Battalion under Major Blake, in repelling this assault, is to be
especially commended. . . ."
Thus terminated the direct efforts of the enemy to take Charleston.
With the capture of Morris Island, and the demolition of
the offensive power of Sumter, General Gilmore, with his land
forces, had done all he was able to do; and contended that he had
done all he had engaged to do; and that it was enough that the
gate was now open for the fleet to enter and finish the undertaking.[54]
The fleet thought otherwise. From thenceforward,
until the operations of Sherman in the interior of the State
compelled the evacuation of the city, the enemy's operations
before Charleston, as heretofore stated, were confined to a cannonade
upon Sumter to prevent its rehabilitation as an artillery
post, to the exchange of shots with our James Island batteries,
from which nothing resulted, and to the regular bombardment
of the city from Cummings Point. The fleet occasionally joined
in the pounding of Sumter or engaged indecisively the Sullivan's
Island batteries.
General Beauregard's efforts were confined principally to completing
the defenses of Charleston. On James Island, with which
the writer was most familiar, these became very complete. Pemberton's
and Ripley's lines from Secessionville, by way of Royall's
house to Fort Pemberton, were abandoned. Starting at Secessionville
a line much shorter was carried to Dill's, just above
Grimball's on the Stono. This was a cremaillere infantry breastwork
of strong profile, with heavy enclosed redoubts at distances
of 700 and 800 yards, having defensive relations to each other.
On the Stono were one or two heavy redoubts securing that flank.
Fort Pemberton was nearly, if not quite, dismantled. From
Secessionville to Fort Johnson, along the eastern shore of the
island looking towards Folley and Morris Islands, heavy batteries,
opened to the rear with trenches or breastworks for
infantry supports, were erected, and from Johnson to opposite the
city heavy batteries for the defense of the inner harbor[55]
Bombproofs,
covered ways, rifle pits and all the appliances of the
engineer's art were exhausted in strengthening this system of
works. Magnetic telegraphs were put up from Pemberton,
Secessionville, Fort Haskell and Johnson, respectively, to headquarters
at Royall's house, and a complete system of signals by
rockets established. The command was divided into two divisions
—Generals Hagood and Colquitt in charge, and General Taliaferro
commanded the island.
In November, President Davis visited James Island. General
Taliaferro was absent on leave and General Hagood in command.
Mr. Davis inspected the works closely, going at a rapid gallop
with his cortege from battery to battery and stopping long enough
to receive a salute and ride around the regiments which were
drawn up along his route, each near its post. He seemed in good
spirits; the troops betrayed much enthusiasm, but he acknowledged
their cheers for "Our President" by simply raising his
hat. General Hagood rode with him as commander of the island,
and necessarily had much conversation with him. Here and on
the field of battle at Drury's Bluff when General Beauregard was
pleased to present him again, with a compliment, to the President,
were the only times he was ever in conversation with this distinguished
Davis was a guest, entertained the party in the city.
In February, 1864, the enemy inaugurated a campaign in
Florida, covering the movement of troops from before Charleston
by a demonstration upon Johns Island. Colquitt was
sent with his brigade to re-enforce our troops in that quarter, and
the battle of Olustee terminated the campaign. The Eleventh
South Carolina was sent after Colquitt, but arrived after the
battle. It was, however, creditably engaged afterwards in an
affair of pickets.
Olustee, like Secessionville, was one of the decisive battles of
the war, with comparatively small forces engaged. At the time,
and so far since, the credit seemed to attach to General Finnigan,
the district commander. From what General Hagood learned
of it from those engaged he was inclined to believe the credit
solely due to Colquitt. He was said to have been on a reconnoisance
in force under orders from Finnigan, when he unexpectedly
encountered the advance of the Yankee Army and
engaged it without orders. He received no orders or re-enforcements
during the fight until, just as he was preparing for his
decisive charge, a message from Finnigan, five miles in rear,
directed him to fall back. The charge was made, and the enemy
thoroughly routed.[56]
No fresh troops were sent in pursuit. Colquitt
ordered forwarded a squadron or two of cavalry which had
accompanied his reconnoisance and been unengaged in the fight.
They did not get out of sight of the field of battle before they
bivouacked for the night. The enemy, it was said, abandoned
artillery in the road twenty miles from the field of action.
Taliaferro was now sent to Florida to take command of that
district; he was in a short time superseded by Major-General
Patton Anderson and returned to James Island.
The troops on James Island were generally hutted, and, from
the facility of getting private supplies from home (they were
chiefly Georgians and South Carolinians), lived tolerably well.
The commissariat supply was irregular and bad. Major Guerrin
in Charleston and Northrop in Richmond were too much for us.
Under Confederate regulations, the commissary department was
almost independent of even a general commanding a separate
writer of his plans being thwarted by the interference of
Northrop, the chief at Richmond. Colonel Northrop's qualifications
for this high position, it was said with sarcastic bitterness,
were to have been at West Point with President Davis some
thirty years before and to have lived a misanthrope since without
active participations in even civil life. It was a popular notion
among the soldiers that he was a vegetarian and did not think
meat healthy. Guerrin had been an office clerk for a physician
in Charleston before the war and had married Northrop's niece.
The writer knows that the movement and supply of troops is the
most difficult of the problems of war; and he trusts he is not
disposed to criticise harshly any man or set of men who "wore the
grey." But he also knows that on James Island, had it not been
for private sources of supply, the troops would have often been
on siege rations, and that, too, when there was uninterrupted communication
with the middle and back country of Georgia and
South Carolina which teemed with provisions. A year later
Sherman and his men expressed themselves amazed at the abundance
they encountered here. During the winter (of 1863-64)
the wives of many of the officers came down, and there was quite
a pleasant society on the island. Ladies on horseback and in carriages
were not an uncommon sight, and sometimes during a
lull in the firing of the batteries a dancing party was had at a
post liable to be opened upon at any time. Horse racing, coursing
rabbits with greyhounds, and cock fighting amused the fancies
of each sport; and occasionally a whole regiment would be seen
on a grand battue. Deploying as skirmishers, each man armed
only with a club, they would sweep over the extensive field,
whooping and yelling; and it was astonishing to see what numbers
of rabbits, partridges and other small game, too scared to
escape, they would bring to bag. The health of the troops was
good, their morale excellent, and many a tatterdemalion who
followed the Red Cross flag under Lee and Johnston in '64 and
'65 looked back upon this portion of his service at the siege of
Charleston with fond regret.
Before leaving for Virginia, whither he had been ordered
in April, 1864, General Hagood went over to Sumter to look at its
condition. He had last seen it on the night of the 18th July, 1863,
armed at all points, equalled for offensive power by perhaps
few in the world, and triumphant in its recent decisive repulse
of the ironclad fleet. The first day from Gilmore's huge rifled
projectiles had demonstrated the inability of its masonry to
withstand land breaching batteries, and despoiled by friends and
battered by foes, it now lay in the moonlight a huge misshapen
mound upon the quiet bosom of the bay. Save the battle flag floating
in the night breeze, there was no sign of life or occupation,
as we approached, until the quick decisive challenge of the
warden obscured in the shade of the ruin arrested us. The watchword
given, and landing, the visitors dived by a zigzag and
obstructed entrance into the bowels of the mass of debris and
came into a securely ceiled and well lighted gallery running the
whole circle of the ruins, neatly whitewashed, thoroughly ventilated,
widening here into a barrack room with bunks in which
the reserve of the garrison were quietly sleeping; narrowing there
into a covered way loopholed to give a musketry fire upon what
was once the parade; and again developing itself into a hospital
room, a compact headquarters office and a place of arms for
defense, with ample and ingeniously defended passages for egress
to summit of the ruins. Here sentinels in single rifle pits were
stationed, having for giving the alarm, in addition to their guns, a
wire by each, upon pulling which a bell was rung at the same time
in the headquarters office and in each station of the garrison
within. Boat howitzers, securely sheltered upon the interior
slope of the debris, were so placed and combined with arrangements
for musketry fire as to sweep every part of the parade.
Wire entanglements, movable during the day or a bombardment
upon the exterior slope, added to the difficulties of escalade which
the action of the tides already made difficult enough. For at the
edge of the water, the debris, which from the summit so far had
a natural slope, was washed away, making here a nearly perpendicular
wall five or six feet high. One or two heavy guns were
mounted in the northwest angle of the fort which was sheltered
by its position from Gilmore's land batteries. These had a field
of fire upon the inner harbor, and would have been serviceable
upon vessels succeeding in reaching that position in an advance
of the fleet upon the city. The general appearance of the work
inward, was that of the crater of an extinct volcano.
As barrack and bomb-proof and casemate and magazine of the
original fort had crumbled under the enemy's unparalleled fire,
until protected alone by what had once been its defenses, no living
thing could have survived even one day's ordinary bombardment;
and the garrison, clinging tenaciously to the site, had burrowed
into the increasing debris. Working under almost ceaseless fire,
they had converted this wreck of an artillery fort, without a
single gun to reply to her long range assailants, into an infantry
post comparatively safe for its defenders, and with which, after
one feeble effort, its assailants had never the nerve to grapple in
assault.
Elliott, who had held the fort since the fall of Morris Island[57]
without relief in the arduous and wearing duty, had just been
promoted to a regiment and gone to Virginia, where in further
recognition of his services he received the first vacant South
Carolina brigade. Captain Mitchell was now in command and
Captain Johnson remained the resident engineer. After the war,
and not long before his untimely death, the writer was walking
with Elliott on the streets of desolated Columbia, when they met
and stopped to speak with Mrs. Pickens. After a few moments
of conversation, the lady presented her little daughter to him and
said in an aside to the child, "When you are old enough, my dear,
to read the story of Fort Sumter, you will know why mamma
wished to present you to General Elliott." Mitchell found his
grave amidst its ruins, and Johnson here established a reputation
for genius in his profession and for devoted gallantry unsurpassed
in the war.
| Memoirs of the war of secession | |