This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1863–1864
Gillmore’s headquarters on Folly Island directed the department quartermaster at Hilton Head to make arrangements for carrying an operation into execution. The Federal army on these islands had to be fed, watered and supplied entirely by sea.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 1
Five gun carriages were watched moving up the beach toward Battery Wagner. That night the post boat running from Fort Johnson to Fort Sumter intercepted a small boat carrying two Federal soldiers and captured them without resistance — nothing of importance was learned from them. The harbor at night belonged to whoever’s rowboat found the other first.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 28, Pt. 1
“During the forty-eight hours since the closing of our last report…” The Mercury was still numbering the days — four hundred and fifty-nine of them — and still filing the same accounting of shells thrown and shells struck, four months before the city was given up.
Charleston Mercury, 10 October 1864, p. 2, “Siege Matters — Four Hundred and Fifty Ninth Day”
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.