1862Skirmish
Affair at Kirk’s Bluff
An affair at Kirk’s Bluff. Four days later the Federals made their real move of the season, at Pocotaligo, and were thrown back.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14
This day in Charleston
October 18
3 entries · 1862–1864
1863Fort Sumter
A garrison relieved by rowboat
Companies I and K of the 11th South Carolina were relieved at Fort Sumter by the 12th Georgia Battalion — 218 men, carried across in the dark. The Federal battery arrangements, Confederate observers thought, now indicated operations against Sullivan’s Island. Another lot of coal came off the fort that night.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 28, Pt. 1
1864The city
What a newspaper cost in a besieged city
The Mercury’s own masthead is a price index of the siege. In December 1861 it asked ten dollars a year. By May 1864, printed from an office on King Street, it wanted fifteen cents a copy and fifteen dollars for six months, with advertisements at three dollars the square of twelve lines. By this date in October it was twenty dollars for six months. The paper that had argued South Carolina out of the Union was charging four times its pre-war rate to report the consequences.
Charleston Mercury mastheads: 13 December 1861, p. 1; 2 May 1864, p. 2; 18 October 1864, p. 2
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.