This day in Charleston
2 entries · 1861–1864
South Carolina troops took possession of Fort Johnson on James Island, the last of the harbor works still nominally federal apart from Sumter itself. Long derelict, it mattered for its position: from Fort Johnson a gun bore squarely on Fort Sumter’s gorge, and it was from a mortar here that the signal shell of 12 April was fired. Fort Sumter →
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
Another quiet day, broken about one o’clock when Battery Tatom traded six shots with the Federal work on Black Island. Confederate observers noted the enemy busy at Wagner and Gregg, where an embrasure was being cut that bore in the direction of the city — the beginning of a fresh position for shelling Charleston.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 35, Pt. 1
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.