CONFEDERATE SIGNALMEN IN 61
The Confederate signal service was first in the field. Beauregard's report acknowledges the aid rendered his army at Bull Run by Captain (afterwards General) E. P. Alexander, a former pupil of Major A. J. Mytr. McDowell was then without signalmen, and so could not communicate regularly with Washington. While Major Myer was establishing a Federal signal training-school at Red Hill, such towers were rising along the already beleaguered Confederate coast. This one at Charleston, South Carolina, is swarming with young Confederate volunteers gazing out to sea in anticipation of the advent of the foe. They had not long to wait. During nearly four years the Union fleet locked them in their harbor. For all that time Fort Sumter and its neighbors defied the Union power.