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Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1., From Moultrie to Sumter. (search)
ld him to take three schooners and some barges which had been chartered for the purpose of taking the women and children and six months supply of provisions to Fort Johnson, opposite Charleston. He was instructed when the secession patrols should ask what this meant, to tell them we were sending off the families of the officers sed in one of the engineer boats. As soon as the troops were all in we fired a cannon, to give notice of our arrival to the quartermaster, who had anchored at Fort Johnson with the schooners carrying the women and children. He immediately sailed up to the wharf and landed his passengers and stores. Then the workmen of secessiont was broad daylight, the idea being that he did not desire to waste his ammunition. We have not been in the habit of regarding the signal shell fired from Fort Johnson as the first gun of the conflict, although it was undoubtedly aimed at Fort Sumter. Edmund Ruffin of Virginia is usually credited with opening the attack by f
Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1., Inside Sumter: in 1861. (search)
programme. This was the first intimation the guard-boat people had of the transfer; and, indeed, it told them nothing, except that some soldiers must have got into Sumter. But they blew their alarm-whistle all the same, and burned blue-lights; signal-rockets were sent up from various points, and there was great excitement everywhere in the harbor until morning. When the signal-guns were fired, the officer in charge of the two schooners which had carried provisions and ammunition to Fort Johnson (under the pretense that they were subsistence for the women and children, whom he had also carried there as a cloak) cast loose his lines and made all speed for Sumter, and the old sergeant who had been left in Moultrie for the purpose set fire to the combustibles which had been heaped around the gun-carriages, while another man spiked the guns. The garrison from the ramparts of its new nest grimly approved of the destruction of the old one. At dawn of December 27th the men were up
Robert Underwood Johnson, Clarence Clough Buell, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: The Opening Battles. Volume 1., The first step in the War. (search)
nfederate mortar-battery on Morris Island, commanded by Lieutenant C. R. Holmes. From a photograph. members of General Beauregard's staff, went immediately to Fort Johnson on James Island, and the order to fire the signal gun was given to Captain George S. James, commanding the battery at that point. It was then 4 A. M. Captain posed to be carrying a supply of arms and ammunition to New Orleans. (See also pp. 27 and 47.)-editors. The boat with the aides of General Beauregard left Fort Johnson before arrangements were complete for the firing of the gun, and laid on its oars, about one-third the distance between the fort and Sumter, there to witness ttars), Captain J. Gadsden King, Lieutenants W. D. H. Kirkwood, J. P. Strohecker, A. M. Huger, and E. L. Parker. James Island, Major N. G. Evans commanding; Fort Johnson (battery of 24-pounders), Captain George S. James; Mortar Battery, Lieutenants W. H. Gibbes, H. S. Farley, J. E. McP. Washington, and T. B. Hayne; Upper Batte
The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South (ed. Alexander Kelly McClure), The First attack on Fort Fisher (search)
ach. Back of these, and extending across to the Cape Fear river, was a line of rifle-pits; and on the shore of the stream, across from Mound Battery, was another artificial sand-hill, thirty feet in height, with four cannon upon it, and named Battery Buchanan. These constituted the defenses on Federal Point, and commanded the entrance to the Cape Fear river by New Inlet. About seven miles southwest from Fort Fisher, at Smithville, on the right of the old entrance to the Cape Fear, was Fort Johnson; and about a mile south of that was Fort Caswell. The latter and Fort Fisher were the principal guardians of the port of Wilmington. At Baldhead Point, on Smith's Island, was Battery Holmes. These were the works which the government proposed to turn or assail after Farragut had effectually closed the port of Mobile, in August, 1864. Wilmington was then the only refuge for blockade-runners on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The National Government considered several plans for capturi
The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South (ed. Alexander Kelly McClure), The First shot against the flag. (search)
the delivery of Major Anderson's response, a telegram was sent to Montgomery, informing the authorities that Major Anderson would not consent. Inside the work, the men were informed of what had happened, and directed to await the summons to the guns. No fire was to be returned until daylight. The night was calm and clear, and the sea was still. Fires were lighted in all the Confederate works, when, at 4.30 A. M., the silence was broken by the discharge of a mortar from a battery near Fort Johnson, within easy range of the work; a shell rose high in the air, and burst directly over Fort Sumter; its echo died away, and all was still again; when, suddenly, fire was opened from every battery of the enemy. At daylight, all the guns of Fort Sumter opened, and the fire steadily continued all day. During the night of the 12th, the accurate range of the mortars lodged a shell in the parade, or about the work, at intervals of fifteen minutes. It was estimated that over twenty-five hundred
Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, Chapter 4: War. (search)
Army and was already commissioned by the seceding States, was building hostile batteries on every side. A crisis in this harbor was fast approaching. The Government of the United States decided to make an attempt to throw men and provisions into the fort, and when this became known, orders were issued from Montgomery for Beauregard to open his batteries. In the gray of the morning at half-past 4 on a certain Friday, April 12, 1861, a single shot fired from the Confederate batteries at Fort Johnson announced that the bombardment of a fort over whose grim walls floated the Stars and Stripes was about to begin. The report of the bursting of this shell startled the country from center to circumference. The Angel of Peace which for months had been hovering over the republic plumed his wings for flight and the Demon of War reigned supreme. President Lincoln followed this act of war by issuing a proclamation calling for seventyfive thousand troops. A prompt response was given to him b
Lt.-Colonel Arthur J. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, June, 1863. (search)
, Fort Beauregard, &c., is on Sullivan's Island, one mile distant from Fort Sumter. There are excellent arrangements of--, and other contrivances, to foul the screw of a vessel between Sumter and Moultrie. On the other side of Fort Sumter is Fort Johnson, on James Island, Fort Cummins Point, and Fort Wagner, on Morris Island. In fact, both sides of the harbor for several miles appear to bristle with forts mounting heavy guns. The bar, beyond which we counted thirteen blockaders, is nine micipated, the Monitors had managed to force their way past Sumter, they would have been received from different directions by the powerful battery Bee on Sullivan's Island, by this island, Forts Pinckney and Ripley, by the two gunboats, and by Fort Johnson on James Island — a nest of hornets from which perhaps they would never have returned. At 1 P. M. I called on General Beauregard, who is a man of middle height, about forty-seven years of age. He would be very youthful in appearance were i
Lt.-Colonel Arthur J. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, July, 1863. (search)
at Harper's Ferry. The scenery through the pass is very fine. The first troops, alongside of whom we rode, belonged to Johnson's division of Ewell's corps. Among them I saw, for the first time, the celebrated Stonewall Brigade, formerly commandedch of blue-bellies in or near Gettysburg, and he declared that he was in their society three days ago. After passing Johnson's division, we came up to a Florida brigade, which is now in Hill's corps; but as it had formerly served under Longstreefore turned round and took leave of these cheery and plucky gunners. At 7 P. M., General Lee received a report that Johnson's division of Ewell's corps had been successful on the left, and had gained important advantages there. Firing entirelytrain of plunder had been proceeding towards Hagerstown by the Fairfield road ever since an early hour this morning. Johnson's division had evacuated during the night the position it had gained yesterday. It appears that for a time it was actua
John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion, Chapter 5: Sumter. (search)
st 4 o'clock, on the morning of April 12th, 1861, while yet the lingering night lay upon the waters of the bay, leaving even the outline of Fort Sumter scarcely discernible, the assembled spectators saw a flash from the mortar battery near old Fort Johnson, on the south side of the harbor, and an instant after a bombshell rose in a slow, high curve through the air, and fell upon the fort. To the beholders it was the inauguration of the final scene in their local drama; to the nation and world ae lay in a sort of triangle about the fort: Sullivan's Island, containing Fort Moultrie, to the northeast at a distance of 1,800 yards; Cumming's Point, on Morris Island, to the south at a distance of 1,300 yards; and on James Island, near old Fort Johnson, to the west at a distance of 2,500 yards. Their total armament embraced forty-seven guns. Thus, in numbers, the armaments appeared about equal, but the existing conditions created an immense disparity. Anderson's fire was diffused; the
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events, Diary from December 17, 1860 - April 30, 1864 (ed. Frank Moore), 1861, January (search)
tempting to smoke the American troops out as you would smoke a rabbit out of a hollow. Another was for filling bombs with prussic acid and giving each of the United States soldiers a smell. Still another supposed that the fort might be taken without bloodshed by offering to each soldier ten dollars and a speaking to. And still another thought that by erecting a barricade of cotton bales, and arming it with cannon, a floating battery might be made, which, with the aid of Forts Moultrie and Johnson, and Castle Pinckney, together with redoubts thrown up on Morris' and Jones' Islands, and with further assistance of an armed fleet, an attack might be made on the fort, and at some convenient point a party of sharpshooters might be stationed, who would pick off the garrison, man by man, thus giving an opportunity to a party of infantry to scale the walls of the fort. Such a storming, however, could only be accomplished by an immense sacrifice of life; and the only practicable mode of tak
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