Campfire and battlefield

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DRAFT RIOTS.

ATTITUDE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY—VALLANDIGHAM BANISHED—SPEECH OF EX-PRESIDENT PIERCE—SPEECH OF HORATIO SEYMOUR—LAW OF SUBSTITUTES PERSISTENTLY MISINTERPRETED—THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK—THE RIOTS—THE AUTUMN ELECTIONS.

he second attempt at invasion by Lee had ended at Gettysburg even more disastrously than the first, and he returned to Virginia at the head of hardly more than one-half of the army with which he had set out; on the next day Vicksburg fell, the Mississippi was opened, and Pemberton's entire army stacked their muskets and became prisoners. Then the war should have ended; for the question on which the appeal to arms had been made was practically decided. Four great slave States—Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri—had never really joined the Confederacy, though some of them were represented in its Congress, and the territory that it actually held was steadily diminishing. The great blockade was daily growing more effective, the largest city in the South had been held by National troops for fifteen months, and the Federal authority was maintained somewhere in every State, with the sole exception of Alabama. The delusion that Southern soldiers would make a better army, man for man, than Northern, had long since been dispelled. The nation had suffered from incompetent commanders; but time and experience had weeded them out, and the really able ones were now coming to the front. The taboo had been removed from the black man, and he was rapidly putting on the blue uniform to fight for the enfranchisement of his race. Lincoln with his proclamation, and Meade and Grant with their victories, had destroyed the last chance of foreign intervention. In the military situation there was nothing to justify any further hope for the Confederacy, or any more destruction of life in the vain endeavor to disrupt the Union. If there was any justification for a continuance of the struggle on the part of the insurgents, it was to be found only in a single circumstance—the attitude of the Democratic party in the Northern States; but it must be confessed that this was such as to give considerable color to their expectation of ultimate success.

The habitual feeling of antagonism to the opposite party, from which few men in a land of popular politics are ever wholly free, was reinforced by a sincere belief on the part of many that the Government, in determining to crush the rebellion, had undertaken a larger task than it could ever accomplish. This belief was born of an ignorance that it was impossible to argue with, because it supposed itself to be enlightened and fortified by great historical facts. Both conscious and unconscious demagogues picked out little shreds of history and formulated phrases and catch-words, which village newspapers and village statesmen confidently repeated as unanswerable arguments from the experience of nations. Thus Pitt's exclamation during the war of American independence, "You cannot conquer America!" was triumphantly quoted thousands of times, as an argument for the impossibility of conquering the South. Assertions were freely made that the despotism of the Administration (in trying to save the National armies from useless slaughter, by arresting spies and traitors at the North) exceeded anything ever done by Cæsar or the Russian Czar. The word "Bastile" was given out, without much explanation, and was echoed all along the line. The war Governors of the free States, and especially the provisional military Governors in Tennessee and Louisiana, were called Lincoln's satraps; and "satraps," with divers pronunciations, became a popular word. The fathers of the Republic were all mentioned with sorrowful reverence, and it was declared that the Constitution they had framed was destroyed—not by the Secessionists, but by Mr. Lincoln and his advisers. Somebody invented a story that Secretary Seward had said he had only to reach forth his hand and ring a bell, and any man in the country whom he might designate would at once be seized and thrown into prison; whereupon "the tinkle of Seward's little bell" became a frequent head-line in the Democratic journals. The army before Vicksburg was pointed at in derision, as besieging a place that could never be taken.

It did not occur to any of these orators and journalists to explain the difference between an ocean three thousand miles wide, and the Rappahannock River; or the difference between an absolute monarch born to the purple, and a president elected by a free vote of the people; or even the difference between a state of peace and a state of war. None of them told their hearers that, only eight years before, the city of Sebastopol had withstood the combined armies of England and France for almost a year, while the city of Vicksburg, when Grant besieged it, fell on the forty-seventh day. Nor did any of them ever appear to consider what the probable result would be if the entire Democratic party in Northern States should give the Administration as hearty support as it received from its own.

It is easy to see the fallacy of all those arguments now, and the unwisdom of the policy from which they sprang; but they were a power in the land at that time, and wrought unmeasured mischief. The most conspicuous opponent of the Government in the West was Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, whose position will be understood most readily from a few of his public utterances. He wrote, in May, 1861: "The audacious usurpation of President Lincoln, for which he deserves impeachment, in daring, against the very letter of the Constitution, and without the shadow of law, to raise and support armies, and to provide and maintain a navy, for three years, by mere executive proclamation, I will not vote to sustain or ratify—never." Speaking in his place in the House of Representatives in January, 1863, he said: "I have denounced, from the beginning, the usurpations and infractions, one and all, of law and Constitution, by the President and those under him; their repeated and persistent arbitrary arrests, the suspension of habeas corpus, the violation of freedom of the mails, of the private house, of the press and of speech, and all the other multiplied wrongs and outrages upon public liberty and private right which have made this country one of the worst despotisms on the earth for the past twenty months. To the record and to time I appeal for my justification." In proposing conciliation and compromise as a substitute for the war, he said, borrowing the language of the Indiana Democratic platform, "In considering terms of settlement, we will look only to the welfare, peace, and safety of the white race, without reference to the effect that settlement may have upon the condition of the African." For these and similar utterances, especially in regard to a military order that forbade the carrying of firearms and other means of disturbing the peace, and for the effect they were having upon his followers, Mr. Vallandigham was arrested in May, 1863, by the military authorities in Ohio, tried by court-martial, and sentenced to imprisonment during the war. The President commuted the sentence to banishment beyond the lines, and the prisoner was taken south through Kentucky and Tennessee, and sent into Confederate territory under a flag of truce. This of course placed him in the light of a martyr, and a few months later it made him the Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio.

In the East, ex-President Pierce, of New Hampshire, loomed up as a leader of the opposition. On January 6, 1860, he had written to Jefferson Davis (who had been Secretary of War in his cabinet) a letter in which he said: "Without discussing the question of right—of abstract power to secede—I have never believed that actual disruption of the Union can occur without blood; and if through the madness of Northern abolitionists that dire calamity must come, the fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's line merely. It will be within our own borders, and in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred. Those who defy law and scout constitutional obligations will, if we ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find occupation enough at home." In an elaborate Fourth-of-July oration at Concord in 1863, he said: "No American citizen was then [before the war] subject to be driven into exile for opinion's sake, or arbitrarily arrested and incarcerated in military bastiles—even as he may now be—not for acts or words of imputed treason, but if he do but mourn in silent sorrow over the desolation of his country. Do we not all know that the cause of our calamities is the vicious intermeddling of too many of the citizens of the Northern States with the constitutional rights of the Southern States, coöperating with the discontents of the people of those States? We have seen, in the experience of the last two years, how futile are all our efforts to maintain the Union by force of arms; but, even had war been carried on by us successfully, the ruinous result would exhibit its utter impracticability for the attainment of the desired end. With or without arms, with or without leaders, we will at least, in the effort to defend our rights as a free people, build up a great mausoleum of hearts, to which men who yearn for liberty will in after years, with bowed heads and reverently, resort, as Christian pilgrims to the sacred shrines of the Holy Land." This was long referred to, by those who heard it, as "the mausoleum-of-hearts speech."

In the great State of New York the Democratic leader was Horatio Seymour, who had been elected Governor in the period of depression that followed the military defeats of 1862. While Pierce was speaking in Concord, Seymour was delivering in New York a carefully written address, in which—like Pierce and Vallandigham—he complained, not of the secessionists for making war at the South, but of the Administration for curtailing the liberty of the Government's enemies at the North. He said: "When I accepted the invitation to speak at this meeting, we were promised the downfall of Vicksburg [the telegraph brought news of it while he was speaking], the opening of the Mississippi, the probable capture of the Confederate capital, and the exhaustion of the rebellion. When the clouds of war overhung our country, we implored those in authority to compromise that difficulty; for we had been told by that great orator and statesman, Burke, that there never yet was a revolution that might not have been prevented by a compromise opportunely and graciously made. Until we have a united North, we can have no successful war; until we have a united, harmonious North, we can have no beneficent peace. Remember this, that the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."

The practical effect of all these protests, in the name of liberty, against arrests of spies and traitors, and suspension of the habeas corpus, was to assist the slave-holders in their attempt to make liberty forever impossible for the black race, in pursuance of which they were willing to destroy the liberties of the white race and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, most of which were valuable to their country and to mankind, being lives of men who earned a living by the sweat of their own faces. All the abridgment of the liberties of Northern citizens, in time of war, by President Lincoln's suspension of the writ, and by arbitrary arrests, was not a tithe of what those same citizens had suffered in time of peace from the existence of slavery under the Constitution. Yet neither President Pierce, nor Chief Justice Taney, nor Horatio Seymour, nor Mr. Vallandigham, had ever uttered one word of protest against the denial of free speech in criticism of that institution, or against the systematic rifling of mails at the South, or against the refusal to permit American citizens to sojourn in the slave States unless they believed in the divine right of slavery.

It was no wonder that such utterances as those quoted above, by the leaders of a party, at such a time, should be translated by its baser followers into reasons for riot, arson, and butchery. Another exciting cause was found in the persistent misinterpretation of what was meant to be a beneficent provision of the conscription law. Drafts had been ordered in several of the States to fill up quotas that were not forthcoming under the volunteer system. The law provided that a man whose name was drawn, if he did not wish to go into the service himself, might either procure a substitute or pay three hundred dollars to the Government and be released. In the North, where there were no slaves to do the necessary work at home, it was absolutely essential to have some system of substitution; and the three-hundred-dollar clause was introduced, not because the Government wanted money more than it wanted men, but to favor the poor by keeping down the price of substitutes, for it was evident that that price could never rise above the sum necessary for a release. Yet this very clause was attacked by the journals that assumed to champion the cause of the poor, as being a discrimination in favor of the rich! Mr. Vallandigham said in a speech at Dayton: "The three-hundred-dollar provision is a most unjust discrimination against the poor. The Administration says to every man between twenty and forty-five, 'Three hundred dollars or your life.'" When the clause had been repealed, in consequence of the ignorant clamor raised by this persistent misrepresentation, the price of substitutes rapidly went beyond a thousand dollars.

A new levy of three hundred thousand men was called for in April, 1863, with the alternative of a draft if the quotas were not filled by volunteering. The quota of the city of New York was not filled, and a draft was begun there on Saturday, the 11th of July. There had been premonitions of trouble when it was attempted to take the names and addresses of those subject to call, and in the tenement-house districts some of the marshals had narrowly escaped with their lives. On the morning when the draft was to begin, several of the most widely read Democratic journals contained editorials that appeared to be written for the very purpose of inciting a riot. They asserted that any draft at all was unconstitutional and despotic, and that in this case the quota demanded from the city was excessive, and denounced the war as a "mere abolition crusade." It is doubtful if there was any well-formed conspiracy, including any large number of persons, to get up a riot; but the excited state of the public mind, especially among the laboring population, inflammatory handbills displayed in the grogshops, the presence of the dangerous classes, whose best opportunity for plunder was in time of riot, and the absence of the militia that had been called away to meet the invasion of Pennsylvania, all favored an outbreak. It was unfortunate that the draft was begun on Saturday, and the Sunday papers published long lists of names that were drawn—an instance of the occasional mischievous results of journalistic enterprise. Those interested had all Sunday to talk it over in their accustomed meeting-places, and discuss wild schemes of relief or retaliation; and the insurrection that followed was more truly a popular uprising than the rebellion that it assisted and encouraged.

When the draft was resumed on Monday, the serious work began. One provost-marshal's office was at the corner of Third Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. It was guarded by sixty policemen, and the wheel was set in motion at ten o'clock. The building was surrounded by a dense, angry crowd, who were freely cursing the draft, the police, the National Government, and "the nigger." The drawing had been in progress but a few minutes when there was a shout of "Stop the cars!" and at once the cars were stopped, the horses released, the conductors and passengers driven out, and a tumult created. Then a great human wave was set in motion, which bore down everything before it and rolled into the marshal's office, driving out at the back windows the officials and the policemen, whose clubs, though plied rapidly and knocking down a rioter at every blow, could not dispose of them as fast as they came on. The mob destroyed everything in the office, and then set the building on fire. The firemen came promptly, but were not permitted to throw any water upon the flames. At this moment Superintendent John A. Kennedy, of the police, approaching incautiously and unarmed, was recognized and set upon by the crowd, who gave him half a hundred blows with clubs and stones, and finally threw him face downward into a mud-puddle, with the intention of drowning him. When rescued, he was bruised beyond recognition, and was lifted into a wagon and carried to the police headquarters. The command of the force now devolved upon Commissioner Thomas C. Acton and Inspector Daniel Carpenter, whose management during three fearful days was worthy of the highest praise.

Another marshal's office, where the draft was in progress, was at Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, and here the mob burned the whole block of stores on Broadway between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Streets. At Third Avenue and Forty-fourth Street there was a battle between a small force of police and a mob, in which the police were defeated, many of them being badly wounded by stones and pistol-shots. Some of them who were knocked down were almost instantly robbed of their clothing. Officer Bennett fell into the hands of the crowd, and was beaten so savagely that no appearance of life was left in him, when he was carried away to the dead-house at St. Luke's Hospital. Here came his wife, who discovered that his heart was still beating; means of restoration were used promptly, and after three days of unconsciousness and a long illness he recovered. Another officer was stabbed twice by a woman in the crowd; and another, disabled by a blow from an iron bar, was saved by a German woman, who hid him between two mattresses when the pursuing mob was searching her house for him. In the afternoon a small police force held possession of a gun factory in Second Avenue for four hours, and was then compelled to retire before the persistent attacks of the rioters, who hurled stones through the windows and beat in the doors.

Toward evening a riotous procession passed down Broadway, with drums, banners, muskets, pistols, pitchforks, clubs, and boards inscribed "No Draft!" Inspector Carpenter, at the head of two hundred policemen, marched up to meet it. His orders were, "Take no prisoners, but strike quick and hard." The mob was met at the corner of Amity (or West Third) Street. The police charged at once in a compact body, Carpenter knocking down the foremost rioter with a blow that cracked his skull, and in a few minutes the mob scattered and fled, leaving Broadway strewn with their wounded and dying. From this time, the police were victorious in every encounter.

During the next two days there was almost constant rioting, mobs appearing at various points, both up-town and down-town. The rioters set upon every negro that appeared—whether man, woman, or child—and succeeded in murdering eleven of them. One they deliberately hanged to a tree in Thirty-second Street, his only offence being the color of his skin. At another place, seeing three negroes on a roof, they set fire to the house. The victims hung at the edge of the roof a long time, but were obliged to drop before the police could procure ladders. This phase of the outbreak found its worst expression in the sacking and burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum, at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street. The two hundred helpless children were with great difficulty taken away by the rear doors while the mob were battering at the front. The excitement of the rioters was not so great as to prevent them from coolly robbing the building of everything valuable that could be removed before they set it on fire. Bed-clothing, furniture, and other articles were passed out and borne off (in many cases by the wives and sisters of the rioters) to add to the comfort of their own homes. Several tenement houses that were occupied by negroes were attacked by the mob with a determination to destroy, and were with difficulty protected by the police.

The office of the Tribune was especially obnoxious to the rioters, because that paper was foremost in support of the Administration and the war. Crowds approached it, singing

and at one time its counting-room was entered by the mob and a fire was kindled, but the police drove them out and extinguished the flames. The printers were then supplied with a quantity of muskets and bomb-shells, and long board troughs were run out at the windows, so that in case of an attack a shell could be lighted and rolled out, dropping from the end of the trough into the crowd, where its explosion would produce incalculable havoc. Happily the ominous troughs proved a sufficient warning.

A small military force was brought to the aid of the police, and whenever an outbreak was reported, a strong body was sent at once to the spot. The locust clubs, when wielded in earnest, proved a terrible weapon, descending upon the heads of rioters with blows that generally cracked the skull. A surgeon who attended twenty-one men reported that they were all wounded in the head, and all past recovery. One of the most fearful scenes was in Second Avenue, where the police and the soldiers were assailed with stones and pistol-shots from the windows and the roofs. Dividing into squads, they entered the houses, which, amid the cries and curses of the women, they searched from bottom to top. They seized their cowering assailants in the halls, in the dark bedrooms, wherever they were hiding, felled them, bayoneted them, hurled them over the balusters and through the windows, pursued them to the roof, shot them as they dodged behind chimneys, refusing all mercy, and threw the quivering corpses into the street as a warning to the mob. It was like a realization of the imaginary taking of Torquilstone.

One of the saddest incidents of the riot was the murder of Col. Henry J. O'Brien, of the Eleventh New York Volunteers, whose men had dispersed one mob with a deadly volley. An hour or two later the Colonel returned to the spot alone, when he was set upon and beaten and mangled and tortured horribly for several hours, being at last killed by some frenzied women. Page after page might be filled with such incidents. At one time Broadway was strewn with dead men from Bond Street to Union Square. A very young man, dressed in the working-clothes of a mechanic, was observed to be active and daring in leading a crowd of rioters. A blow from a club at length brought him down, and as he fell he was impaled on the picket of an iron fence, which caught him under the chin and killed him. On examination, it was found that under the greasy overalls he wore a costly and fashionable suit, and there were other indications of wealth and refinement, but the body was never identified.

Three days of this vigorous work by the police and the soldiers brought the disturbance to an end. About fifty policemen had been injured, three of whom died; and the whole number of lives destroyed by the rioters was eighteen. The exact number of rioters killed is unknown, but it was more than twelve hundred. The mobs burned about fifty buildings, destroying altogether between two million and three million dollars' worth of property. Governor Seymour incurred odium by a speech to the rioters, in which he addressed them as his friends, and promised to have the draft stopped, and by his communications to the President, in which he complained of the draft, and asked to have it suspended till the question of its constitutionality could be tested in the courts. His opponents interpreted this as a subterfuge to favor the rebellion by preventing the reinforcement of the National armies. The President answered, in substance, that he had no objection to a testing of the question, but he would not imperil the country by suspending operations till a case could be dragged through the courts.

Fourteen of the Northern States had enacted laws enabling the soldiers to vote without going home. In some of the States it was provided that commissioners should go to the camps and take the votes; in others the soldier was authorized to seal up his ballot and send it home to his next friend, who was to present it at the polls and make oath that it was the identical one sent to him. The enactment of such laws had been strenuously opposed by the Democrats, on several grounds, the most plausible of which was, that men under military discipline were not practically free to vote as they pleased. The most curious argument was to this effect: a soldier that sends home his ballot may be killed in battle before that ballot reaches its destination and is counted. Do you want dead men to decide your elections?

These were the darkest days of the war; but the riots reacted upon the party that was supposed to favor them, the people gradually learned the full significance of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and at the autumn election the State of New York, which a year before had elected Governor Seymour, gave a handsome majority in favor of the Administration. In Ohio, where the Democrats had nominated Vallandigham for Governor, and made a noisy and apparently vigorous canvass, the Republicans nominated John Brough. When the votes were counted, it was found that Mr. Brough had a majority of one hundred thousand, the largest that had ever been given for any candidate in any State where there was a contest. Politically speaking, this buried Mr. Vallandigham out of sight forever, and delivered a heavy blow at the obstructive policy of his party.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON.

BLOCKADE OF THE HARBOR—DU PONT'S ATTACK—DEFEAT—CAPTURE OF THE "ATLANTA"—GILLMORE'S SIEGE—ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER—ITS CAPTURE—THE SWAMP ANGEL—BOMBARDMENT OF CHARLESTON—ACCURATE FIRING FROM MORTAR GUNS—TURNING NIGHT INTO DAY—STEADY CANNONADING FOR FORTY HOURS.

As Charleston was the cradle of secession, there was a special desire on the part of the Northern people that it should undergo the heaviest penalties of war. They wanted poetic vengeance to fall upon the very men that had taught disunion, fired upon Sumter, and kindled the flames of civil strife. And there were not a few at the South who shared this sentiment, believing that they had been dragged into ruin by the politicians of South Carolina. Many would have been glad if the whole State could have been pried off from the rest of the Union and slidden into the depths of the sea. But there was a better than sentimental reason for directing vigorous operations against Charleston. Its port was exceedingly useful to the Confederates for shipping their cotton to Europe and receiving in return the army clothing, rifles, and ammunition that were produced for them by English looms and arsenals. Early in the war the Government attempted to close this port with obstructions. Several old whale-ships were loaded with stone, towed into the channel, and sunk, at which there was a great outcry, and the books were searched to see whether this barbarous proceeding, as it was called, was permissible under the laws of war and of nations. In 1854 the harbor of Sebastopol had been obstructed in the same way; but that was done by the Russians, whose harbor it was, to prevent the enemy from coming in. The strong currents at Charleston soon swept away the old hulks or buried them in the sand, and a dozen war vessels had to be sent there to maintain the blockade. This was an exceedingly difficult task. The main channel ran for a long distance near the shore of Morris Island, and was protected by batteries. The westward-bound blockade runners commonly went first to the British port of Nassau, in the West Indies, and thence with a pilot sailed for Charleston. After the main channel had been closed in consequence of the occupation of Morris Island by National troops, steamers of very light draft, built in England for this special service, slipped in by the shallower passes. A great many were captured, for the blockaders developed remarkable skill in detecting their movements, but the practice was never wholly broken up till the city was occupied by the National forces in February, 1865.

In January, 1863, two Confederate iron-clads steamed out of the harbor, on a hazy morning, and attacked the blockading fleet. Two vessels, by shots through their steam-drums, were disabled, and struck their colors; but the remainder of the fleet came to their assistance, and the iron-clads were driven back into the harbor, leaving their prizes behind. General Beauregard and Captain Ingraham (commanding the military and naval forces of the Confederacy at Charleston) formally proclaimed this affair a victory that had "sunk, dispersed, and driven off or out of sight the entire blockading fleet," and, consequently, raised the blockade of the port. These assertions, repeated in foreign newspapers, threatened for a time to create serious complications with European powers, by raising the question whether the blockade (supposed to be thus broken) must not be re-proclaimed, and notice given to masters of merchant vessels, before it could be reëstablished. But the falsity of the claim was soon shown, and no foreign vessels accepted the invitation to demand free passage into the port of Charleston.

This affair increased the desire to capture the port, put an absolute end to the blockade-running there, and use it as a harbor of refuge for National vessels. Accordingly, a powerful fleet was fitted out for the purpose, and placed under the command of Rear-Admiral S. F. Du Pont, who had reduced the forts of Port Royal in November, 1861. It consisted of seven monitors, an iron-clad frigate, an iron-clad ram, and several wooden gunboats. On the 7th of April, 1863, favored by smooth water, Du Pont steamed in to attack the forts, but most extraordinary precautions had been taken to defend the city. The special desire of the Northern people to capture it was offset by an equally romantic determination on the part of the Secessionists not to part with the cradle in which their pet theory had been rocked for thirty years. Besides the batteries that had been erected for the reduction of Fort Sumter, they had established others, and they occupied that fort itself. All these works had been strengthened, and new guns mounted, including some specially powerful ones of English manufacture. All the channels were obstructed with piles and chains, with innumerable torpedoes, some of which were to be fired by electric wires from the forts, while others were arranged to explode whenever a vessel should run against them. The main channel, between Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter, was crossed by a heavy cable supported on empty barrels, with which was connected a network of smaller chains. In the south channel there was a tempting opening in the row of piles; but beneath this were some tons of powder waiting for the electric spark.

The monitor Weehawken led the way, pushing a raft before her to explode the torpedoes. Not a man was to be seen on any of the decks, and the forts were ominously silent. But when the Weehawken had reached the network of chains, and had become somewhat entangled therein with her raft, the batteries opened all around, and she and the other monitors that came to her assistance were the target for a terrible concentric fire of bursting shells and solid bolts. The return fire was directed principally upon Sumter, and was kept up steadily for half an hour, but seemed to have little effect; and after trying both the main and the south channel, the fleet retired. The monitor Keokuk, which had made the nearest approach to the enemy, was struck nearly a hundred times. Shots passed through both of her turrets, and there were nineteen holes in her hull. That evening she sank in an inlet. Most of the other vessels were injured, and some of the monitors were unable to revolve their turrets because of the bending of the plates.

Du Pont's defeat was offset two months later, when the Confederate iron-clad Atlanta started out on her first cruise. She was originally an English blockade-runner, and as she was unable to get out of the port of Savannah after the fall of Fort Pulaski, the Confederates conceived the idea of iron-plating her after the fashion of the Merrimac and sending her out to sink the monitors and raise the blockade of Charleston. It was said that the ladies of Charleston contributed their jewelry to pay the expenses, and after fourteen months of hard labor she was ready for action. But Du Pont had heard the story, and sent two monitors to watch her. On the 17th of June, early in the morning, she dropped down the channel, followed by two steamers loaded with citizens, including many ladies, who anticipated a great deal of pleasure in seeing their powerful iron-clad sink the monitors. These came up to meet her, the Weehawken, Captain Rodgers, taking the lead. Rodgers fired just five shots from his enormous eleven-inch and fifteen-inch guns. One struck the shutter of a port-hole and broke it, another knocked off the Atlanta's pilot-house, another struck the edge of the deck and opened the seams between the plates, and another penetrated the iron armor, splintered the heavy wooden backing, and disabled forty men. Thereupon the Atlanta hung out a white flag and surrendered, while the pleasure-seekers hastened back to Savannah. It is said that the vessel might have been handled better if she had not run aground. She was carrying an immense torpedo at the end of a boom thirty feet long, which projected from her bow under water. She was found to be provisioned for a long cruise, and was taken to Philadelphia and exhibited there as a curiosity.

The city of Charleston, between its two rivers, with its well-fortified harbor, bordered by miles of swampy land, was exceedingly difficult for an enemy to reach. General Quincy A. Gillmore, being sent with a large force to take it, chose the approach by way of Folly and Morris Islands, where the monitors could assist him. Hidden by a fringe of trees, he first erected powerful batteries on Folly Island. On the northernmost point of Morris Island (Cumming's Point) was the Confederate Battery Gregg, the one that had done most damage to Sumter at the opening of the war. South of this was Fort Wagner, and still farther south were other works.

Fort Wagner was a very strong earthwork, measuring on the inside six hundred and thirty feet from east to west, and two hundred and seventy-five feet from north to south. It had a bomb-proof magazine, and a heavy traverse protecting its guns from any possible attack on the land side. Behind the sea-face was a well-constructed bomb-proof, into which no shot ever penetrated. The land-face was constructed with reëntering angles, so that the approaches could all be swept by cross fire, and the work was surrounded by a ditch filled with water, in which was a line of boarding-pikes fastened together with interlaced wire, and there were also pickets at the front of the fort with interwoven wire a slight distance above the ground, to impede the steps of any assaulting force. It was one of the most elaborate works constructed during the war. Its engineer, Captain Cleves, was killed by one of the first shells fired at it.

On the morning of July 10th, Gillmore suddenly cut down the trees in his front and opened fire upon the most southerly works on Morris Island, while at the same time the fleet commanded by Admiral Dahlgren, who had succeeded Du Pont, bombarded Fort Wagner. Under cover of this fire troops were landed, and the earthworks were quickly taken.

The day being terribly hot, the advance on Fort Wagner was postponed till the next morning, and then it was a failure. A week later a determined assault was made with a force of six thousand men, the advance being led by the first regiment of colored troops (the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts) that had been raised under the authorization that accompanied the Emancipation Proclamation. A bombardment of the fort by the land batteries and the fleet was kept up from noon till dusk, and during its last hour there was a heavy thunder-storm. As soon as this was over, the assaulting columns were set in motion. They marched out under a concentrated fire from all the Confederate batteries, then met sheets of musketry fire that blazed out from Wagner, then crossed the ditch waist-deep in water, while hand-grenades were thrown from the parapet to explode among them, and even climbed up to the rampart. But here the surviving remnant met a stout resistance and were hurled back. General Strong, Colonel Chatfield, Colonel Putnam, and Robert G. Shaw, the young commander of the black regiment, were all killed, and a total loss was sustained of fifteen hundred men, while the Confederates lost but about one hundred.

In burying the dead, the Confederates threw the body of Colonel Shaw into the bottom of a trench, and heaped upon it the bodies of black soldiers, whose valor, no less than their color, had produced an uncontrollable frenzy in the Confederate mind. When it was inquired for, under flag of truce, word was sent back: "We have buried him with his niggers." Those who thus tried to cast contempt upon the boyish colonel were apparently not aware that he was braver than any of his foes. In advancing along that narrow strip of land, every foot of which was swept by a deadly fire, crossing the ditch and mounting the parapet, Colonel Shaw exhibited a physical courage that it was impossible to surpass; while in organizing and leading men of the despised race that was now struggling toward liberty, he showed a moral courage such as the rebels neither shared nor comprehended.

Among those who participated in this sorrowful enterprise was the Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, chaplain of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment, who was so assiduous in his attentions to the wounded, and remained so long on the field among them, that he was captured by the Confederates, who held him a prisoner for several months. Among those in attendance at the hospital at the first parallel was Clara Barton, who afterward became famous for her humane services.

Gen. Alvin C. Voris, who was seriously wounded in the assault on Fort Wagner, has given a vivid description of his experiences there, from which we quote a few interesting passages:

"All through the night of July 17th I lay with my men, the Sixty-seventh Ohio, within half canister range of the fort. It was very dark, cloudy, and enlivened by an occasional splash of rain and lightning, by which we could see sentinels on beat on the fort. Just before break of day we crawled quietly away, and took a good square breath of relief as we passed behind our first line of intrenchments. There we undertook to rest under a most scorching sun and on burning white sand, which reflected back both light and heat rays with torturing rigor. We were compelled to work night and day, twelve hours on and twelve off, all the while under shot and exploding shell from some quarter. When off duty we tried to rest ourselves under the shelter of the low sand-waves silently thrown up by the wind. Our poor tired bodies became so exhausted under the great pressure upon us that we would stretch out on the burning sands, even when under the greatest danger, and snatch a few hours of fitful, anxious sleep, frequently to be awakened by the explosion of some great shell. The land and sea breezes kept the air full of floating sand, which permeated everything—clothing, eyes, ears, nostrils—and at the height of the wind would fly with such force as to make the face and hands sting with pain.

"Just at dark ten regiments of infantry were formed along the beach, one and a half miles below the fort, and the charge was at once undertaken. Quietly the column marched until its head had passed the line of our field batteries. No sooner had this taken place than one thousand six hundred men in Wagner and Gregg sprang to arms and opened on the advancing columns with shot, shell, and musketry, which called to their immediate assistance the armed energies of Sumter, Moultrie, and Beauregard, and all the batteries on Sullivan's and James's Islands. When we got within canister range of the fort there were added to this awful cataclysm double-shotted charges of canister from eight heavy guns directly raking our approach, each discharge equal to a double pailful of cast-iron bullets, three-fourths of an inch in diameter. Every moment some unfortunate comrade fell, to rise no more, but we closed up our shattered ranks and pressed on with such impetuosity that we scaled the walls and planted our banners on the fort. The Sixty-seventh, with heroic cheers, flung her flag to the midnight breezes on the rampart of Wagner, but only to bring it away riddled to tatters. Seven out of eight of the color-guard were shot down, and Color-Sergeant McDonald, with a broken leg, brought it away. Lieutenant Cochran went alone to headquarters, two thousand five hundred yards to the rear, for reinforcements, assuring General Gillmore that we could hold the fort, and then went back to Wagner and brought off eighteen out of forty men with whom he started in the column in that fatal charge. Two other lieutenants, with a dozen men, held one of the enemy's large guns for nearly two hours, over which they had hand-to-hand contests with the soldiers in charge of the piece.

"I was shot within a hundred and fifty yards of the fort, and so disabled that I could not go forward.... Two boys of the Sixty-second Ohio found me and carried me to our first parallel, where had been arranged an extempore hospital. Here a surgeon sent his savage finger-nail into my lacerated side and pronounced the bullet beyond his reach, and said I would not need his further attention. Like a baby I fainted, and, on reviving, laid my poor aching head on a sand-bag to recruit a little strength. That blessed chaplain, Henry Clay Trumbull, found me and poured oil of gladness into my soul and brandy into my mouth, whereat I praised him as a dear good man and cursed that monster of a surgeon, which led the chaplain to think the delirium of death was turning my brain, and he reported me among the dead of Wagner."

General Gillmore now resorted to regular approaches for the reduction of Fort Wagner. The first parallel was soon opened, and siege guns mounted, and the work was pushed as rapidly as the unfavorable nature of the ground would admit. By the 23d of July a second parallel was established, from which fire was opened upon Fort Sumter, two miles distant, and upon the intervening earthworks. As the task proceeded the difficulty increased, for the strip of land grew narrower as Fort Wagner was approached, and the men in the trenches were subjected to cross-fire from a battery on James's Island, as well as from sharp-shooters and from the fort itself. A dozen breaching batteries of enormous rifled guns were established, most of the work being done at night, and on the 17th of August all of them opened fire. The shot and shell were directed mainly against Fort Sumter, and in the course of a week its barbette guns were dismounted, its walls were knocked into a shapeless mass of ruins, and its value as anything but a rude shelter for infantry was gone.

The parallels were still pushed forward toward Wagner, partly through ground so low that high tides washed over it, and finally where mines of torpedoes had been planted. When they had arrived so near that it was impossible for the men to work under ordinary circumstances, the fort was subjected to a bombardment with shells fired from mortars and dropping into it almost vertically, while the great rifled guns were trained upon its bomb-proof at short range, and the iron-clad frigate New Ironsides came close in shore and added her quota in the shape of eleven-inch shells fired from eight broadside guns. Powerful calcium lights had been prepared, so that there was no night there, and the bombardment went on incessantly. At the end of two days, three columns of infantry were ready to storm the work, when it was discovered that the Confederates had suddenly abandoned it. Battery Gregg, on Cumming's Point, was also evacuated.

It is easy to tell all this in a few words; but no brief account of that operation can give the reader any adequate idea of the enormous labor it involved, the danger, the anxiety, and the dogged perseverance of the besiegers. It required the efforts of three hundred men to move a single gun up the beach. General Gillmore was one of the most accomplished of military engineers, and we present here a few of the more interesting passages from his admirable official report:

At the second parallel the "Surf Battery" had barely escaped entire destruction, about one-third of it having been carried away by the sea. Its armament had been temporarily removed to await the issue of the storm. The progress of the sap was hotly opposed by the enemy, with the fire of both artillery and sharp-shooters. At one point in particular, about two hundred yards in front of Wagner, there was a ridge, affording the enemy good cover, from which we received an unceasing fire of small-arms, while the guns and sharp-shooters in Wagner opened vigorously at every lull in the fire directed upon it from our batteries and gunboats. The firing from the distant James's Island batteries was steady and accurate. One attempt, on the 21st, to obtain possession of the ridge with infantry having failed, it was determined to advance by establishing another parallel. On the night of August 21st the fourth parallel was opened about one hundred yards from the ridge, partly with the flying sap and partly with the full sap. At the place selected for it the island is about one hundred and sixty yards in width above high water. It was now determined to try and dislodge the enemy from the ridge with light mortars and navy howitzers in the fourth parallel, and with other mortars in rear firing over those in front. The attempt was made on the afternoon of August 26th, but did not succeed. Our mortar practice was not very accurate. Brigadier-General Terry was ordered, on the 26th of August, to carry the ridge at the point of the bayonet, and hold it. This was accomplished, and the fifth parallel established there on the evening of the same day, which brought us to within two hundred and forty yards of Fort Wagner. The intervening space comprised the narrowest and shallowest part of Morris island. It was simply a flat ridge of sand, scarcely twenty-five yards in width, and not exceeding two feet in depth, over which the sea in rough weather swept entirely across to the marsh on our left. Approaches by the flying sap were at once commenced on this shallow beach, from the right of the fifth parallel, and certain means of defence in the parallel itself were ordered. It was soon ascertained that we had now reached the point where the really formidable, passive, defensive arrangements of the enemy commenced. An elaborate and ingenious system of torpedo mines, to be exploded by the tread of persons walking over them, was encountered, and we were informed by the prisoners taken on the ridge that the entire area of firm ground between us and the fort, as well as the glacis of the latter on its south and east fronts, was thickly filled with these torpedoes. This knowledge brought us a sense of security from sorties, for the mines were a defence to us as well as to the enemy. By daybreak on the 27th of August our sappers had reached, by a rude and unfinished trench, to within one hundred yards of Fort Wagner. The dark and gloomy days of the siege were now upon us. Our daily losses, although not heavy, were on the increase, while our progress became discouragingly slow, and even fearfully uncertain. The converging fire from Wagner alone almost enveloped the head of our sap, delivered, as it was, from a line subtending an angle of nearly ninety degrees, while the flank fire from the James's Island batteries increased in power and accuracy every hour. To push forward the sap in the narrow strip of shallow shifting sand by day was impossible, while the brightness of the prevailing harvest moon rendered the operation almost as hazardous by night. Matters, indeed, seemed at a standstill, and a feeling of despondency began to pervade the rank and file of the command. There seemed to be no adequate return in accomplished results for the daily losses which we suffered, and no means of relief, cheering and encouraging to the soldier, appeared near at hand. In this emergency, although the final result was demonstrably certain, it was determined, in order to sustain the flagging spirits of the men, to commence vigorously and simultaneously two distinct methods of attack, viz., first, to keep Wagner perfectly silent with an overpowering curved fire from siege and coehorn mortars, so that our engineers would have only the more distant batteries of the enemy to annoy them; and, second, to breach the bomb-proof shelter with rifled guns, and thus deprive the enemy of their only secure cover in the work, and, consequently, drive them from it. Accordingly, all the light mortars were moved to the front and placed in battery; the capacity of the fifth parallel and the advanced trenches for sharp-shooters was greatly enlarged and improved; the rifled guns in the left breaching batteries were trained upon the fort and prepared for prolonged action; and powerful calcium lights to aid the night-work of our cannoneers and sharp-shooters, and blind those of the enemy, were got in readiness. The coöperation of the powerful battery of the New Ironsides, Captain Rowan, during the daytime, was also secured.

These final operations against Fort Wagner were actively inaugurated at break of day on the morning of September 5th. For forty-two consecutive hours the spectacle presented was of surpassing sublimity and grandeur. Seventeen siege and coehorn mortars unceasingly dropped their shells into the work, over the heads of our sappers and the guards of the advanced trenches; thirteen of our heavy Parrott rifles—one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred pounders—pounded away at short though regular intervals, at the southwest corner of the bomb-proof; while during the daytime the New Ironsides, with remarkable regularity and precision, kept an almost incessant stream of eleven-inch shells from her eight-gun broadside, ricocheting over the water against the sloping parapet of Wagner, whence, deflected upward with a low remaining velocity, they dropped nearly vertically, exploding within or over the work, and rigorously searching every part of it except the subterranean shelters. The calcium lights turned night into day, and while throwing around our own men an impenetrable obscurity, they brilliantly illuminated every object in front, and brought the minutest details of the fort into sharp relief. In a few hours the fort became practically silent.

The next night, after the capture of Fort Wagner, a few hundred sailors from the fleet went to Fort Sumter in row-boats and attempted its capture. But they found it exceedingly difficult to climb up the ruined wall; most of their boats were knocked to pieces by the Confederate batteries; they met an unexpected fire of musketry and hand-grenades, and two hundred of them were disabled or captured.

While all this work was going on, General Gillmore thought to establish a battery near enough to Charleston to subject the city itself to bombardment. A site was chosen on the western side of Morris Island, and the necessary orders were issued. But the ground was soft mud, sixteen feet deep, and it seemed an impossible task. The captain, a West Pointer, to whom it was assigned, was told that he must not fail, but he might ask for whatever he needed, whereupon he made out a formal requisition for "a hundred men eighteen feet high," and other things in proportion. The jest seems to have been appreciated, but the jester was relieved from the duty, which was then assigned to Col. Edward W. Serrell, a volunteer engineer, who accomplished the work. Piles were driven, a platform was laid upon them, and a parapet was built with bags of sand, fifteen thousand being required. All this had to be done after dark, and occupied fourteen nights. Then, with great labor, an eight-inch rifled gun was dragged across the swamp and mounted on this platform. It was nearly five miles from Charleston, but by firing with a high elevation was able to reach the lower part of the city. The soldiers named this gun the "Swamp Angel." Late in August it was ready for work, and, after giving notice for the removal of non-combatants, General Gillmore opened fire. A few shells fell in the streets and produced great consternation, but at the thirty-sixth discharge the Swamp Angel burst, and it never was replaced.

Gillmore had supposed that when Sumter was silenced the fleet would enter the harbor, but Admiral Dahlgren did not think it wise to risk his vessels among the torpedoes, especially as the batteries of the inner harbor had been greatly strengthened. As Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg were nearer the city by a mile than the Swamp Angel, Gillmore repaired them, turned their guns upon Charleston, and kept up a destructive bombardment for weeks.

As a protection to the city, under the plea that its bombardment was a violation of the rules of war, the Confederate authorities selected from their prisoners fifty officers and placed them in the district reached by the shells. Capt. Willard Glazier, who was there, writes: "When the distant rumbling of the Swamp Angel was heard, and the cry 'Here it comes!' resounded through our prison house, there was a general stir. Sleepers sprang to their feet, the gloomy forgot their sorrows, conversation was hushed, and all started to see where the messenger would fall. At night we traced along the sky a slight stream of fire, similar to the tail of a comet, and followed its course until 'whiz! whiz!' came the little pieces from our mighty two-hundred pounder, scattering themselves all around." By placing an equal number of Confederate officers under fire, the Government compelled the removal of its own.