This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1863–1864
Special Orders No. 513, issued late in the evening from Morris Island: “Fort Wagner will be assaulted at 9 a.m. to-morrow, the 7th instant, by troops to be designated by Brigadier-General Terry.” Overnight the Confederates rowed the whole garrison away, and the assault went in against an empty fort.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 1
In twenty-four hours the Confederate batteries fired 974 rounds and the Federals 2,080, the great majority at Battery Wagner. The sap ran forward to envelop the fort’s bastion, and Federal soldiers stood up above their parapets without drawing a shot. That night the garrison was taken off Morris Island by boat.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 28, Pt. 1
The truce over, the siege column reported Battery Gregg firing through Sunday night at Fort Sumter and, at the same time, into the city. By the autumn of 1864 the two targets were reported in the same sentence as a matter of routine.
Charleston Mercury, 6 September 1864, p. 2, “Siege Matters — Four Hundred and Twenty Fifth Day”
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.