This day in Charleston
4 entries · 1861–1863
The Official Records date the operations on the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida from 21 August 1861. Within eleven weeks a Federal fleet took Port Royal Sound, and the Confederacy lost the finest deep-water harbor between Norfolk and Key West — sixty miles from Charleston, and held for the rest of the war.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 6
An affair on Pinckney Island, between Hilton Head and the mainland — a Confederate boat raid that surprised a Federal picket company at dawn. On this coast the creeks made every outpost a peninsula, and every peninsula reachable at night.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
Gillmore sent Beauregard a demand for the evacuation of Morris Island and Fort Sumter, with notice that failing compliance he would open on Charleston. The paper was delivered unsigned and gave four hours. Beauregard protested that it was an “inhuman” threat against a city of women and children and asked for time to remove them. The first shell went into Charleston before the answer came back.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 1
Captain Walker relieved Lieutenant Parsons in the sap at half past three in the morning under a heavy fire of grape and canister, which stopped before daylight. In the lull he laid a line of gabions along the reverse of the trench to shield the sappers from Confederate marksmen expected to occupy the ruins ahead. At daylight they tried, and were beaten to it.
Major Brooks’ journal, OR I, 28, 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.