This day in Charleston
4 entries · 1861–1865
Anderson’s garrison went aboard the Baltic and left the harbor, and Lincoln called seventy-five thousand militia into service to suppress the insurrection. The call drove Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas out of the Union within six weeks. What Charleston had begun on the twelfth was now a national war.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
The Mercury summed up the bombardment on the Monday morning: “The Battle of Fort Sumter is a marvellous affair in the bloodlessness of an engagement of thirty-two hours and a half. It is surely the merciful finger of God.” It went to press before the news that the surrender itself had killed two men — Private Daniel Hough and Private Edward Galloway, in the salute to the flag Anderson was hauling down.
Charleston Mercury, 15 April 1861, p. 1, “April 13, 1861”
A Federal demonstration on Battery Island, at the mouth of the Stono. The island had been the Confederates’ outpost for the Stono approaches until they gave it up in 1862; after that it belonged to whoever had a gunboat there that morning.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 35, Pt. 1
Lincoln died in Washington on the morning of the fifteenth. The word reached Charleston within days, where the men who had celebrated at Fort Sumter on the fourteenth were still in the harbor. Beecher’s audience had gone home; the flag stayed up.
Contemporary press accounts, April 1865
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.