This day in Charleston
2 entries · 1860–1861
At about a quarter past one in the afternoon the convention passed the Ordinance of Secession in St. Andrew’s Hall, 169 to nothing. That evening the delegates walked to Institute Hall on Meeting Street and signed it in front of some three thousand people. Church bells rang, cannon fired on the Battery, and the hall was renamed Secession Hall. It burned eleven months later. Institute Hall →
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
Sixteen old whaling ships, bought in New England, loaded with granite and sailed south to be scuttled, were sunk in the main ship channel off Charleston to close the port. The channel scoured itself a new way around them within months. The attempt was denounced across Europe as an attack on a harbor rather than on an enemy.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 12
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.