This day in Charleston
5 entries · 1861–1865
Charleston woke on New Year’s Day 1861 as the capital city of an independent republic eleven days old. The palmetto flag flew over the Custom House, volunteer companies drilled on the Battery, and working parties were throwing up sand batteries on Morris Island and Sullivan’s Island against a fort in the harbor still held by sixty-odd United States soldiers.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
Federal troops from Beaufort, covered by gunboats in the Coosaw River, pushed the Confederates off Port Royal Ferry and broke up the works there. It was a small fight with a long shadow: the Union grip on Port Royal Sound, taken in November, was now firm enough to reach inland toward the Charleston and Savannah Railroad.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 6
The Emancipation Proclamation came into force, and at Camp Saxton near Beaufort — sixty miles from Charleston, inside Union lines — it was read aloud to the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of formerly enslaved men. In Charleston the day passed without official notice. The Mercury printed the text as an outrage.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
The new year opened at Charleston with a heavy norther that dragged the frigate Wabash nearly a mile from her anchorage. The headquarters journal recorded a day of unusual quiet — not a gun fired on either side. In the afternoon observers watched the Federals hauling two guns from Oyster Point up to Battery Gregg.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 35, Pt. 1
Charleston entered 1865 with the lower city abandoned to the shells, its business moved above Calhoun Street, and Sherman’s army wintering in Savannah ninety miles down the coast. The bombardment that had begun in August 1863 was in its seventeenth month. Seven weeks remained before the Confederates marched out.
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.