This day in Charleston

June 13

2 entries · 1864

1864Fort Sumter

Eight sick out of two hundred and eighty

“The health of the garrison is very good. Out of some 280 white troops there are only 8 on sick report; none serious… Only 4 men have been considered sick enough during the past month to send up to city hospital, chiefly diarrhea.” Living in a shelled ruin turned out to be healthier than most Civil War camps.

Fort Sumter post returns, OR I, 35, Pt. 1

1864Prisoners

Roper Hospital, where Federal officer prisoners were quartered under the fire of their own guns.Library of Congress

Fifty Federal officers are brought under the shells

Five Union generals and forty-five field officers, prisoners of war, were ordered confined in Charleston — in the part of the city under fire from the Federal guns on Morris Island. It was retaliation, openly stated, and it worked in the sense that both sides eventually exchanged the officers. It also set the pattern for the six hundred who came the following September.

Official Records, Series I, Vol. 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.