This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1862–1864
With martial law expected over Charleston, the pastor of Trinity Church wrote to General Pemberton about the city’s roughly twenty thousand Black residents, of whom ten thousand were church members and six thousand Methodists — the ground, as he saw it, of the city’s “unprecedented quiet.” The letter is a window on how white Charleston in 1862 understood, and misunderstood, the people it held.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
Mayor Charles Macbeth wrote to Pemberton asking to be told plainly what the general intended if Federal gunboats passed the forts and appeared in front of Charleston: would he resist in the city itself? It was a fair question in the month New Orleans fell, and Macbeth was still mayor when he surrendered Charleston nearly three years later.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
“The bombardment of Fort Sumter continues with spirit. From Friday morning until dark on Saturday, three hundred and ninety-five mortar shells were thrown at the fort from the enemy’s batteries. This severe fire was likewise kept up on Sunday.” The Mercury had been numbering the days since the landing on Morris Island; this was the two hundred and ninety-eighth.
Charleston Mercury, 2 May 1864, p. 2, “Siege Matters — Two Hundred and Ninety Eighth Day”
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.