This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1863
Brooks ordered his sharpshooters to try exploding the buried torpedoes in front of the Federal works by firing at their plungers. They hit the plungers; the torpedoes did not go off. It was bright moonlight, and the Confederates kept a sharp musketry fire on the advanced trenches all night.
Major Brooks’ journal, OR I, 28, Pt. 1
From Charleston, General Ripley answered Beauregard on the defense of Battery Wagner: every practicable effort had been and would be made to hold it, with a constant fire kept up from the James Island batteries and communication maintained with the fort to regulate it. Wagner was abandoned eight nights later.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 2
At half past eleven at night Gillmore signaled the fleet: “Can you spare me some 200-pounder shells? My supply is very low. A constant fire on Sumter is more than my guns can stand very long. I have lost three 200-pounders.” Dahlgren answered within twenty minutes — guns or projectiles, as many as he wished. The bombardment that reduced Fort Sumter was destroying the guns that fired it about as fast as it destroyed the fort.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 2
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