This day in Charleston
2 entries · 1862–1865
The gunboat USS Huron seized the schooner Albert — late the Irene of New Jersey, sailing under English colors — twelve miles off the land and heading in for Bull’s Bay. The blockade was not a wall; it was a patrol of tired steamers guessing which hull, on which heading, meant to run in that night.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 12
Charleston’s freedpeople had reburied the Union prisoners who died at the Washington Race Course, fenced the ground and lettered an archway “Martyrs of the Race Course.” On 1 May 1865 roughly ten thousand people — thousands of Black schoolchildren at the head, carrying roses — came out to dedicate it. Historian David W. Blight has argued it is the earliest known Decoration Day. The Martyrs of the Race Course →
Contemporary press accounts, May 1865
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.