This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1861–1865
South Carolina’s efforts to negotiate the surrender of Fort Sumter through commissioners in Washington had by mid-February come to nothing; Secretary Holt’s reply to Colonel Hayne on 6 February refused to give up the fort on any terms. The question passed out of the hands of lawyers.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
Union forces occupied Edisto Island. The planters had withdrawn to the mainland; some 1,500 to 2,000 enslaved people remained, and the island became one of the earliest laboratories of free labor in the South. Two years later Edisto’s freedmen were farming the land in their own right.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 6
Federal forces attacked Battery Simkins on James Island the same day Wheeler’s cavalry checked Kilpatrick at Aiken. The two actions, a hundred and twenty miles apart, were the last time Confederate troops fought forward of Charleston and the last Confederate tactical success in the state.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 47
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.