Officer, Engineer · Union

Quincy A. Gillmore

Commanding the Department of the South during the 1863 operations against Charleston, and the engineer who demolished Fort Sumter from four thousand yards.

Charleston

Gillmore took the Department of the South on 12 June 1863 as a brigadier general of volunteers and directed the operations against the defences of Charleston Harbor: the crossing to Morris Island on 10 July, the siege of Battery Wagner, and the breaching batteries that reduced Fort Sumter from four thousand yards, which nobody had thought possible. His report of those operations is the principal Federal account of the campaign.

Life

Corps of Engineers; first in the West Point class of 1849. He had breached Fort Pulaski with rifled guns in April 1862, and was commissioned major general of volunteers to date from 10 July 1863, the day of the Morris Island landing.

Johnson, writing from inside the target, gives him full credit for the breaching and for the siege of Wagner, and then asks the question that account keeps returning to: why 2,400 men were lost in front of a battery that the breaching batteries had already made irrelevant.

Service

  1. Brigadier General of VolunteerscommissionedDepartment of the South, engineer · Union army12 June 1863 to 10 July 1863Gillmore 1865
  2. Major General of VolunteerscommissionedDepartment of the South, engineer · Union army10 July 1863 to May 1864Gillmore 1865 Johnson 1890

Each rank is the rank held at the time described. A later promotion is shown only in its own dated entry.

Places

  • Commanded from Morris Island

    10 July 1863 to May 1864 · high confidence

    EvidenceCommanded the operations on the island from the crossing of 10 July 1863; his report is the principal Federal account.

    Gillmore 1865

Burial

Not yet documented.

Photographs

Quincy Adams Gillmore
Quincy Adams Gillmore1861–1865

What is established, and on whose authority

  • verifiedCorps of Engineers; first in the West Point class of 1849.Gillmore 1865
  • verifiedBreached Fort Pulaski with rifled guns in April 1862.Gillmore 1865
  • verifiedTook command of the Department of the South on 12 June 1863 as a brigadier general of volunteers.Gillmore 1865
  • verifiedCommissioned major general of volunteers to date from 10 July 1863, the day of the Morris Island landing.Gillmore 1865
  • verifiedCommanded the Department of the South from June 1863 to May 1864.Johnson 1890 Gillmore 1865
  • not establishedDates of birth and death, and burial place.no source
  • verifiedThe portrait plate catalogued here as “quincy-adams-gillmore” is of this person.Library of Congress

Identity: verified. Last checked 31 August 2026.

Corrections to this record are welcome through the publisher.