This day in Charleston

December 21

3 entries · 1860–1864

1860Secession

“Loud shouts of joy rent the air”

The Mercury reported the vote to the minute: the Ordinance presented just before one o’clock, the roll called at seven minutes past — “without one solitary exception in that whole grave body—Aye!” — and the thing carried at a quarter past one. The Convention had sat with closed doors, so the city learned of it from the paper’s own bulletin board in the street. “Old men went shouting down the streets. Cannon were fired, and bright triumph was depicted on every countenance.”

Charleston Mercury, 21 December 1860, p. 1, “The 20th Day of December, in the Year of Our Lord, 1860”

1863Command

“I regret to hear you are still suffering from your eyes”

Beauregard wrote to Major General Gilmer, his second in command at Savannah, regretting that he was still suffering from his eyes. The correspondence of the Charleston department is full of small human notes like this, folded into orders about guns and obstructions.

Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 2

1864Sherman

Savannah falls

Sherman took Savannah and offered it to Lincoln as a Christmas gift. Charleston was now the only Atlantic port left to the Confederacy south of Wilmington, with a Union army a hundred miles to the southwest and no railroad connection worth the name to anywhere else.

Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 16

Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.