This day in Charleston

February 20

2 entries · 1864–1865

1864Harbor defense

“I concur in the views of Colonel Harris”

Beauregard’s indorsement on an engineering question the same day his reinforcements were fighting in Florida. The department commander at Charleston spent most of his war on paper, and most of that paper on earthworks.

Official Records, Series I, Vol. 35, Pt. 1

1865The fall

Ruins of the Cathedral — The Cathedral of St. John and St. Finbar, burned in 1861 and still standing open to the sky when the Federal photographers arrived.Library of Congress

Putting out the fires

Union troops and Charleston’s remaining citizens spent the days after the surrender fighting fires in the lower city and burying the dead of the depot explosion. Federal officers who had shelled the place for eighteen months walked streets of grass-grown pavement, broken glass and shuttered houses, and wrote home that it looked like a ruin of antiquity.

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.