This day in Charleston
2 entries · 1861–1864
The chartered merchant steamer Star of the West left New York with two hundred soldiers and provisions for Fort Sumter, sent quietly in place of a warship in the hope that a civilian vessel would not provoke a fight. Charleston knew she was coming before she arrived — the news had been telegraphed south the same week.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 1
Colonel Elliott's morning count from Fort Sumter: the New Ironsides, four monitors, two wooden gunboats, two mortar-boats and fifteen sailing vessels inside the bar, and in Light-House Inlet five steamers, seven schooners and a steam derrick — which, he noted, had always been there but had never before been specially reported.
Fort Sumter post returns, 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.