This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1862–1863
Colonel William Fenton of the 8th Michigan reported his brigade’s part in the action of the 16th at Secessionville. The 8th Michigan lost heavily on the parapet, and carried the memory of that morning for the rest of the war.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
The Mercury’s account of Secessionville, printed the morning after: the Federal column came on at the double quick “without firing a single volley. It was afterwards ascertained that their muskets were empty, and that they had actually hoped to carry the battery with the bayonet alone.” Three charges were thrown back. A field officer’s letter in the same column puts the defence at not more than three hundred and fifty effective men, caught at the entrenchments five hundred yards from their arms.
Charleston Mercury, 17 June 1862, p. 2, “Important from James’ Island — Bloody Fight at Secessionville”
The Confederate ironclad CSS Atlanta, converted from the blockade runner Fingal, came down to fight the monitors in Wassaw Sound below Savannah and grounded. The USS Weehawken put four 15-inch shots into her in fifteen minutes and she struck. Every Confederate ironclad on this coast now had to be treated as a harbor battery, not a warship — including Charleston’s.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 14
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.