to bury the hatred and prejudice which has so embittered the past, and live only for a common country, made of many parts whose interests are identical.
CHAPTER VI.
CHARLESTON
First Visit to Charleston. – Jail Yard. – Bombardment of the City. – Roper Hospital. – Charleston During the War. – Secession of South Carolina. – Attack and Surrender of Fort Sumter. – Blockade of the Harbor. – Great Fire of 1861. – Capitulation in 1865. – First Settlement of the City. – Battles of the Revolution. – Nullification Act. – John C. Calhoun. – Population of the City. – Commerce and Manufactures. – Charleston Harbor. – "American Venice." – Battery. – Streets, Public Buildings and Churches. – Scenery about Charleston. – Railways and Steamship Lines. – An Ancient Church. – Magnolia Cemetery. – Drives near the City. – Charleston Purified by Fire.
My first introduction to the city of Charleston can scarcely be said to have been under propitious circumstances. True, a retinue of troops conducted my companions and myself, with military pomp, to our quarters in the city. But these quarters, instead of being any one of its fine hotels, were none other than the Charleston Jail Yard, for the year was 1864, and we were prisoners of war.
After a varied experience of prison life at Richmond, Danville, Macon and Savannah, I had been sent, with a number of others, to Charleston, South Carolina, to be placed under the fire of our batteries, which were then bombarding the city. We had received more humane treatment at Savannah than at any previous place of detention; therefore it was with a sinking of the heart that we found ourselves, when we arrived at our destination, thrown into the jail yard at Charleston, which was the grand receptacle of all Union prisoners in that city. The jail was a large octagonal building, four stories high, surmounted by a lofty tower. A workhouse and a gallows also occupied the yard. The jail building was for the accommodation of criminals, military prisoners, and Federal and Rebel deserters, all of whom at least had the advantage of shelter from sun and storm. The war prisoners were permitted the use of the yard only, which was in the most filthy condition conceivable, having been long used as a prison-pen, without receiving any cleaning or purification whatever. The only shelter afforded us were the remnants of a few tents, which had been cut to pieces, more or less, by former prisoners, to make themselves clothing.
This jail yard was in the southeastern portion of the city, and apparently directly under the fire of our batteries on Morris Island. But though the shells came screaming over our heads, and proved a subject of interest, discussion, and even mathematical calculation among the prisoners, who were thankful for anything which should take their minds, even momentarily, from the misery which they endured, so carefully were they aimed, not to do us mischief, that though they exploded all about us – in front, behind, and on either side – not one of them fell within the prison enclosure. The scene at night was of peculiar beauty. These messengers of death presented the spectacle of magnificent fireworks, and every explosion sounded as the voice of a friend to us, assuring us that the great Northern army was still exerting itself to crush out the rebellion and open our prison doors and set us free.
Reaching Charleston and its jail yard September twelfth, 1864, on the twenty-ninth I was transferred to the Roper Hospital, having given my parole that I would not attempt to escape. The quarters here were so much more comfortable that it was almost like a transition from hell to heaven. Leaving behind me the filthiness of the jail yard, and my bed there on the chill, bare ground, where I had protection against neither heat nor cold, storm nor sunshine, to be permitted the freedom of the beautiful garden of the hospital, and to sleep even upon the hard floor of the piazza, were luxuries before unenjoyed in my experience of southern prisons. And here the Sisters of Charity, those angels among women, did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the sick, and to add to the comfort of us all. Their ministrations were bestowed indiscriminately on Rebels and Federals, with a charity as broad and boundless as true religion.
On October fifth we were ordered to leave Charleston, and were sent, in the foulest of cattle cars, to Columbia, the Capital of the State. We left Charleston without a regret. It was the breeding place of the rankest treason, the cradle of the Rebellion, and the scene of untold cruelties to Union prisoners. At the time of our brief visit to the city, it was undergoing all the horrors of an actual siege. About one-third of its territory had been destroyed by fire during the early part of the war, caused by shells thrown from the Union batteries on Morris Island. This portion of the city was deserted by all its inhabitants save the negroes, who, during every brief cessation in the bombardment, flocked in and took possession, rent free, to scatter as quickly when one or more of them had been killed by the sudden appearance and explosion of shells in this quarter. The balance of the city was forsaken by non-combatants, and the blockade had put an end to all her commerce. The quiet industries of peace had given place to all the turmoil of war. Her streets were filled with military, while the boom of the distant batteries, the whiz of the flying shells, and the noise of their explosion, were daily and familiar sounds.
During the four years of the war, Charleston was one of the chief points of Federal attack, though it remained in possession of the Confederate forces until the beginning of 1865. These were four terrible years to the city. Yet her sufferings she had brought upon herself. The first open and public movement in favor of the dissolution of the Union was made in that city. South Carolina was the first to call a State convention, and to secede from the Union. This convention was held at Columbia, the Capital of the State, but was adjourned to Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession was unanimously passed on the twentieth of December, 1860. Fort Sumter, which was one of the largest forts in Charleston, a massive fortress of solid masonry, standing on an island commanding the principal entrance, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, was in command of Major Robert Anderson, with a garrison of eighty men. On the twenty-seventh of December he ran up the stars and stripes. Governor Pickens immediately demanded a surrender of the fort, which was promptly refused. Early on Friday morning, April twelfth, 1861, the initial gun of the terrible four years' war was fired by the Rebel forces from the howitzer battery on James Island, west of Sumter. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan Island, on the northeast, the gun battery at Cumming's Point, the northwest extremity of Morris Island, and other batteries and fortifications which the Confederates had seized and appropriated to their own use, all followed in a deadly rain of shells upon Sumter. The firing was kept up for thirty-five hours, and Sumter made a vigorous defence, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the supplies exhausted, and the magazine surrounded by flames, when Major Anderson accepted the terms of capitulation offered by General Beauregard.
Upon the surrender of the Fort, which was received as a good omen by the South, troops began to pour into the city, so that by the sixteenth of the same month as many as ten thousand had arrived. The blockade of the port was commenced on the tenth of May, and continued until the close of the war. In the latter part of 1861 an attempt was made by the Federal government to seal up the channel of the harbor with sunken ships, to prevent the egress of privateers. On the twenty-first of December seventeen vessels were sunk, in three or four rows, across the channel. But this attempt at blockade proved a failure. The current washed some of them away, and many passages in a water front of six miles were left unobserved, and more vessels ran the blockade and reached the city, than at any other southern port.
On the tenth of December, 1861, a fire broke out in the city, which destroyed nearly all its public buildings, banks and insurance offices, and several churches, besides many dwellings, reducing thousands to homelessness and the extremity of want. The loss occasioned by this conflagration was estimated at ten millions of dollars.
In 1863, the women, children and other non-combatants were ordered out of the city, and free transportation, food and lodgings were furnished those unable to pay for them. Morris Island had been captured by the Federal Army, who used it as a point of attack against Sumter and the city. Its shells had wrought destruction in all parts of the city, especially in its lower portions. On February seventeenth, 1865, Charleston, which had withstood all attacks from the seaward, capitulated
