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[337]
appeared a crater six feet high and eight feet wide.
But the destruction shown in the picture was wrought by the bombardment from the land-batteries four months later.
General Gillmore's guns opened on August 17th. Major John Johnson in Battles and leaders makes this report of the effect of Gillmore's operations and of the work of the defenders: When demolished by landbat-teries of unprecedented range, the Fort endured for more than eighteen months their almost constant fire, and for a hundred days and nights their utmost power until it could with truth be said that it at last tired out, and in this way silenced, the great guns that once had silenced it. From having been a desolate ruin, a shapeless pile of shattered walls and casemates, showing here and there the guns disabled and half-buried in splintered wrecks of carriages, its mounds of rubbish fairly reeking with the smoke and smell of powder, Fort Sumter under fire was transformed within a year into a powerful earthwork, impregnable to assault, and even supporting the other works at the entrance of Charleston harbor with six guns of the heaviest caliber.Above, it is a monument to the wastefulness of warfare. |
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Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
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