This day in Charleston
2 entries · 1862–1863
With the Federals gone, the Confederates spent July 1862 extending the James Island works — Secessionville, Fort Johnson, the batteries at Cheves and Haskell — into the continuous line that held for the next thirty-one months. Pemberton’s much-criticized decision to give up the outer islands had bought the ground on which it was built.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
On the evening of 12 July the Federals broke ground for the first parallel, 1,350 yards from Battery Wagner, on the site chosen by the general commanding. From here on the campaign was an engineering problem: a siege on a sand spit a few hundred yards wide, under fire from three sides.
Major Brooks’ journal, OR I, 28, 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.