Commanders, garrison and the men opposite

Commanded the fort as an artillery post: through the ironclad attack of 7 April 1863, when he had the regimental band play on the ramparts as the squadron came up, and through the sixteen days of the first great bombardment that ended his command. Beauregard's chief of staff wrote to Ripley on 27 August that in the annals of war no stouter defense was ever made. When the guns were gone Rhett's regiment was needed for the new batteries of the inner harbor, and he went with it; he was back before the harbor fell, commanding the inner line and, for a time, Elliott's own district.

Took the fort at the moment it stopped being an artillery post — two days before Morris Island was evacuated — on the condition that his garrison would be limited and that no Federal flag would fly over the place while Beauregard commanded the department. He was sent down for a day to see what he was accepting, came back in under twenty-four hours, and asked for it. He held it through the naval assault of 9 September, through forty-one days of the second great bombardment, and through the magazine explosion and fire. Johnson's chapter X ends with the plainest summary in the book of what he did with it: he found a dismantled and silenced fort and left a formidable earthwork. He went to Virginia in May 1864, was made brigadier-general, was severely wounded at the Crater, and died of the effects in 1866.

Son of the Irish patriot and exile, with whom he had shared the life in Australia, and in South Carolina service from the beginning: at Fort Moultrie in April 1861, in the capture of the Isaac Smith, and in command of the works at the south end of Morris Island when the Federals came across Lighthouse Inlet. He was killed on the fourteenth day of the third great bombardment, struck on the ramparts by a fragment of a mortar shell that burst eighty feet above the water while he was observing the fleet. He was twenty-four. His promotion to major had been recommended and was daily expected, and never came.

Graduate of the State Military Academy, 1859, and the last Confederate commander of the fort. He had already been the last man out of Battery Wagner in September 1863; on the night of 17 February 1865 he relieved the sentinels of Fort Sumter himself, walked the whole work with his engineer and his adjutant, cast off the lines and stepped aboard. Johnson's note on him is that twice it had fallen to Huguenin to be the last man out of a well-defended post.

In charge of the engineer work at the fort from 7 April 1863, with two absences for wounds, until the evacuation. What he directed is most of what kept the place standing: the filling of the casemates and the gorge rooms, the new sally-port and wharf cut through the western wall, the traverses and merlons, the protection of the magazines, the nightly obstructions, the rebuilding after the December fire, and the 275-foot gallery mined through the ruins of the northern casemates.

Elliott had asked three days earlier that Harleston be kept at the fort through the dark of the moon, being greatly dependent upon his watchfulness and ability. At half-past four on the morning of the 24th a sentinel reported that the sea was tearing away the obstructions on the eastern slope; Harleston went over the crest to inspect the line and was mortally wounded by a 30-pounder shell. He died six hours later, before his twenty-fourth birthday.

Selected from the detailed mechanics to set and recover the obstructions on the exterior slopes — spiked plank, wire entanglement and sections of fraises — placed below the crest every evening at dusk and taken in every morning before daylight, under fire, for more than a year. He was with Harleston on the slope when Harleston was hit, and he is the man who was ordered into a service magazine that appeared to be smoking, with twelve others, to carry the powder out.

Given the job the artillerists had reported impracticable: getting the fort's heavy guns out of the ruins. He began on the night of 27 August 1863 and had two of the heaviest down from the parapet onto a cushion of sandbags at the water's edge before morning, to be floated off the next night. Upward of twenty-five guns and mortars were recovered that way over six months, and rearmed the inner harbor. Johnson's line about him is the shortest character sketch in the book — that difficulty seemed to him nothing but opportunity.

Two of his decisions run through the whole book. The first was to protest, in writing and repeatedly, against the stripping of his department by Richmond — from 30,040 effectives on 7 April 1863 to 15,318 by 10 July — and to warn that James Island, not Morris Island, was the way in. The second was the endorsement of 26 August 1863, over the advice of officers who thought the ruined fort should be given up: Fort Sumter must be held to the last extremity. Johnson also prints his professional opinion against his own side's interest — that a night attack by the ironclads in April 1863, when the fort could not have seen them, would have taken Charleston.

West Point 1833, a Virginia planter for twenty-five years, and Beauregard's engineer from Bull Run through Island No. 10, Fort Pillow and Vicksburg to Charleston. He appears at the decisive moments: at Battery Wagner at the height of the 18 July bombardment, having come down in a small boat under fire; at the council of 24 August that decided Fort Sumter would be held; and on the island on 6 September advising that Wagner be given up that night. Johnson gives him his own appendix.

Responsible for the harbor and its approaches, and the officer whose reports Johnson leans on for the Confederate side of every action in the book. He also appears in the book's central controversy: he had opposed the abandonment of Cole's Island in 1862 that opened Stono to the enemy, and he differed with Beauregard afterwards over the value of Morris Island — an argument Johnson takes up in Appendix E and answers on Beauregard's side.

Came from Jackson's campaigns in Virginia at his own request, took command at Battery Wagner four days before the great assault, and is the author of the report Johnson quotes for it — including the passage on the Charleston battalion holding the parapet through eight hours of bombardment with no protection but the parapet itself. He was still in the district in 1864, commanding on James Island during Foster's combined attempt.

Held the work through its last bombardment — some sixty to seventy guns and mortars against twelve effective guns, for forty-two hours — and then got the garrison off Morris Island between nine at night and two in the morning on 6–7 September 1863, losing three boats and forty-six men. His full report and Huguenin's journal of those nights are printed in the appendix.

Brought nine armored vessels against Fort Sumter on 7 April 1863 and had five of the eight engaged disabled within an hour. He suspended the attack intending to renew it, slept on it, and refused — it would have converted a failure into a disaster — with the support of every captain who had been engaged. Johnson prints the sequel too: his reports were suppressed by the Navy Department for eight months, and he was removed — ordered out of the command on 3 June and actually relieved by Dahlgren on 6 July.

The engineer who took Fort Pulaski and then demolished Fort Sumter from four thousand yards, which nobody had thought possible. Johnson gives him full credit for the breaching and for the siege of Wagner, and then asks the question the book keeps returning to: why 2,400 men were lost in front of a battery that his breaching batteries had already made irrelevant. He is also the source, quoted throughout, for the Federal side of every operation on the island.

Johnson's judgment of him is severe and is argued from his own diary, which is quoted more than any other Federal source in the book. His squadron did valuable work supporting the army on Morris Island; it twice attacked Fort Sumter at night to great effect and never repeated it; it never passed the obstructions, and never examined them until January 1865, when the boats doing so at last cost him the Patapsco and sixty-two men.

Had been the engineer officer at Fort Sumter under Anderson in 1861, and came back to take it. His combined attempt on Fort Johnson on 3 July 1864 is the operation Johnson thinks came nearest to deciding the fate of Charleston, and it failed in the creeks. He then fired 14,666 rounds at Fort Sumter over sixty days, floated three powder rafts against it that all failed, designed row-galleys with towers and mechanical gang-planks that were never built, and reported on 19 September that his fire had stopped for want of ammunition.