This day in Charleston
4 entries · 1860–1864
South Carolina’s presidential electors cast the state’s votes and the last constitutional formality of the 1860 election was done. The convention that would take the state out of the Union assembled eleven days later.
Contemporary press accounts, December 1860
A two-day Federal expedition to Port Royal Ferry and Beaufort. The Union hold on the Beaufort district was becoming permanent, and the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, twenty miles inland, was now the front line.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 6
The monitor USS Weehawken — the ship that had taken the ram Atlanta in June — filled forward and went down at her anchorage off Morris Island in a rising sea, with heavy ammunition stowed in her bow and her hatches open. More than twenty of her crew were lost. She was not sunk by anything the Confederates did.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 15
Four days of Federal operations against the Charleston and Savannah Railroad at Devaux’s Neck and the Tulifinny, meant to cut the line before Sherman reached the coast. The Confederates held the railroad itself, but Savannah fell two weeks later and the line was cut anyway.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 44
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.