Johnson’s defense
The plates and the appendix
Thirty-five illustrations, thirteen folding plates, and a hundred and seventy-six pages of documents.
Johnson's plates are not decoration. Half of them are engineering drawings — plans and sections of the works, the penetration of a single shell measured and drawn, the elevations of a torpedo boat, the harbor's obstructions laid out as they were placed — and the other half are photographs of a fort in the act of being destroyed and rebuilt, several of them taken under fire.
The comprehensive view of the interior at page 166 was taken by George S. Cook of Charleston, from a point in the parade looking north, on 8 September 1863 — while the ironclad squadron was cannonading Sullivan's Island. Two more are from drawings made in December 1863 by Lieutenant John R. Key of the engineers, sent down from Richmond with an artist to record the ruin; Beauregard had photographs of them mounted and sent, with his autograph, to Elliott and to Johnson. Two of the flags are Johnson's own sketches — one of them a new flag torn to pieces in four days' use.
The list below is the volume's own, printed as it stands, with the pages it gives. The images themselves are not reproduced here: the page scans belong to the libraries that hold the copies, and each is one click away in the copy that carries it.
Illustrations in the text
| Subject | Page |
|---|---|
| Portrait of General Beauregard | 17 |
| Plans and Sections of Fort Sumter (1862) | 19 |
| Map of Coast of South Carolina | 24 |
| Plan of Fort Lamar (Secessionville) | 27 |
| Plan, Elevation, and Section of Confederate Iron-clad Ram | 33, 34 |
| Portrait of Rear-Admiral S. F. Dupont | 40 |
| Iron-clad Frigate New Ironsides | 42 |
| The Monitor Passaic | 47 |
| Transverse Section of Turret and Pilot-house | 48 |
| Portrait of Colonel A. Rhett | 49 |
| Shot-marks on Two Faces of Fort Sumter | 57 |
| Portrait of Brigadier-General R. S. Ripley | 64 |
| Plans of Battery (Fort) Wagner | 89 |
| Portrait of Brigadier- (Major-) General Q. A. Gillmore | 96 |
| Portrait of Colonel D. B. Harris, Chief Engineer | 105 |
| Penetration of Breaching Rifle-shell (Fort Sumter) | 117 |
| Penetration of a Fuze-plug at Fort Sumter | 126 |
| Portrait of Major (Brigadier-General) S. Elliott | 156 |
| Comprehensive View of Interior of Fort Sumter, Sept., 1863 | 166 |
| Portrait of Captain F. H. Harleston | 178 |
| Fort Sumter: Interior of Eastern Half of Gorge | 181 |
| Fort Sumter: Interior of Eastern Angle and Sea-face | 183 |
| Fort Sumter's Flag (Jan. 29, 1864) | 186 |
| Fort Sumter: View of Interior, December, 1863 | 188 |
| Fort Sumter: Exterior of "Three-gun Battery" | 203 |
| Fort Sumter's Flag (Feb. 2, 1864) | 207 |
| Fort Sumter: Replacing the Flag | 213 |
| Fort Johnson, James Island | 217 |
| Fort Pringle, James Island | 221 |
| Portrait of Captain J. C. Mitchel | 223 |
| Portrait of Captain T. A. Huguenin | 230 |
| Fort Sumter: Head-Quarters Casemate | 241 |
| Fort Sumter: Interior of the Gorge | 253 |
| Fort Sumter: Exterior of the Gorge and City Front | 255 |
| Fort Sumter: Interior of Sea-face and Eastern Angle | 258 |
After the appendix
Thirteen further plates, folding, unnumbered in the pagination. They are the technical record of the harbor's defenses as they stood at the evacuation, and the reason the volume is cited in the torpedo literature.
| Plate | Subject |
|---|---|
| I–IV | Torpedoes (Harbor) |
| V–VII | Obstructions (Harbor) |
| VIII | Elevations and Sections, Torpedo-boat David |
| IX | Map of Morris Island |
| X | Map of Charleston Harbor |
| XI | Fortifications Sullivan's Island |
| XII | Plans of Fort Sumter (as evacuated) |
| XIII | Sections of Fort Sumter (as evacuated) |
The appendix
The appendix is more than half the volume — 276 pages of text against a hundred and seventy-six of appendix, separately paginated in roman. It is where the documents are, and it is why the book is a source and not only an account.
| Appendix | Page | |
|---|---|---|
| A | Calendar of Events, 1861–65Johnson's own chronology of every operation on the South Carolina coast, day by day, with the count of shots fired at Fort Sumter and the casualties from August 1863 on. Published in full on this site. | i |
| B | The Steam-frigate New IronsidesA monograph on the one seagoing ironclad the United States built during the war: her contract, her building, her armament, her service off Charleston, and Glassell's torpedo attack on her in October 1863. | xxi |
| C | Notes of Iron-clad Warfare, 1854–82A comparative survey, from the French gunboats at Kinburn in the Black Sea through the iron-clad batteries that reduced Fort Sumter in April 1861 to the ships of the early 1880s. | xxxvi |
| D | Memoir of Colonel (Brigadier-General) Harris, Chief EngineerJohnson's account of the officer he says no history of the defense of Charleston could be complete without. | xlii |
| E | The Strategic Value of Morris IslandThe controversy, argued out: Ripley against Beauregard on the island's defensive value, and Gillmore against Beauregard on its offensive value, with Johnson taking Beauregard's side and conceding at the outset that errors were made in the Confederate defense. | xlv |
| F | Reports (Union and Confederate), Correspondence, Despatches, Journals, etc.The bulk of it, arranged by chapter — beginning with the Navy Department's confidential instructions of May 1862 for the capture of Charleston, and running through the Federal and Confederate reports of every action in the book. Note the page: the contents page prints a roman l, fifty, which optical character recognition reads as an arabic 1 in both copies. | l |
The scans
The copy Jack linked is at Google Books, and at the Internet Archive as defensecharlest00johngoog. The second copy, which carries the preface to the second edition and the portrait plate, is at the Archive as defensecharlest01johngoog. Both are full view, and both are public domain.