This day in Charleston
4 entries · 1861–1864
Chew delivered Lincoln’s notice to Governor Pickens in Charleston, with Beauregard present. Within hours the news was telegraphed to Montgomery, and Charleston’s last supply boats to Fort Sumter stopped. Anderson wrote that he had been cut off from all communication.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
Hit ninety times in the space of half an hour, nineteen of them at or below the waterline, the Keokuk had been kept afloat overnight by her pumps and a calm sea. In the morning the sea got up and she went down off Morris Island. Her crew got off. Her two 11-inch Dahlgrens did not — and Charleston went after them.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 14
The Mercury’s account of Du Pont’s attack, written the next morning, records what the city did when the fleet first appeared off the bar: “very many of our non-combatant population (previously incredulous of danger) made hasty preparations to depart; and every train that has left the city since has gone heavily laden with the eleventh-hour refugees and their effects.” Charleston watched the battle itself from the Battery promenade.
Charleston Mercury, 8 April 1863, p. 1
A Federal demonstration on James Island. The stalemate of 1864 was maintained by exactly this: periodic pushes at the Confederate lines that were not meant to break through but to keep Charleston’s garrison in Charleston.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 35, Pt. 1
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.