This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1862–1865
A second fleet of old whalers and merchantmen, loaded with New England granite, was scuttled at the entrance to Charleston Harbor to close the channels. Like the first fleet in December, it failed — the hulks worked into the mud and the currents cut new water around them — but the attempt was denounced in London and Paris as barbarism against a port.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 6
At half past eight in the morning the Federal guns stopped, ending a bombardment that had run without a break for nine days and seven hours and thrown 1,500 percussion and Wiard shells into Charleston. The quiet lasted until quarter to one, when a single Parrott began again.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 35, Pt. 1
Federal columns felt forward from Pocotaligo to the Salkehatchie River and skirmished. The swamps were reckoned impassable in winter, and Confederate planners counted on them. Sherman’s engineers corduroyed and waded through anyway, and the illusion that South Carolina’s rivers would hold him died in the last week of January.
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.