Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[430] great engineering skill, and Gen. Q. A. Gillmore was selected to command the land forces of the enemy engaged in these operations. Morris Island was on the south side of the entrance to the harbour, about three and a half miles in length, low, narrow, and sandy, and separated from the mainland adjacent to it by soft, deep, and impracticable marshes. Its capture, although principally designed to open a way to the enemy's iron-clads, would also serve the purpose of making the blockade of Charleston harbour more thorough and complete, by allowing a portion or all of the blockading fleet to lie inside the bar. But the most important object, as we have indicated, was to secure a position whence it was hoped Fort Sumter might be demolished, and the co-operation of a heavy artillery fire extended to the fleet, when it was ready to move in, run by the batteries on James and Sullivan's Islands, and reach the city.

Gen. Gillmore assumed command on the 12th June, and at once proposed to commence a base of operations on Folly Island. This island, the south end of which controlled the waters of Stone Harbour and Inlet and the water approaches from James Island, had been occupied in force by the enemy since the 7th April. But Gen. Beauregard appears to have had no idea of what was going on there; he never made a reconnoissance of the enemy's outposts on the island; and he was bitterly accused in the Richmond Sentinel, the organ of President Davis' administration, for a want of vigilance, which had permitted the enemy, unknown to him, to construct a base of operations actually within speaking distance of his pickets. It is true that the enemy threw up earthworks and mounted heavy guns on Folly Island under a screen of thick undergrowth; but it is certainly to the last degree surprising that he should have succeeded in secretly placing in battery forty-seven pieces of artillery so near to the Confederate lines that a loud word might have revealed the work, and exposed moreover to a flank and reverse view from their tall observatories on James Island. Indeed there was a circumstance yet more curious. A blockade runner had been chased ashore just south of the entrance to Lighthouse Inlet, and it actually occurred that the vessel was wrecked by Confederate soldiers within pistol range of the enemy's battery on Folly Island, without their being in the least aware of such a grim neighbour.

This battery was ready to open fire on the 6th July. A plan of attack upon Morris Island was now deliberately formed, one part of which was a strong demonstration of Gen. Terry's division, some four thousand infantry, on James Island so as to draw off a portion of the Confederate force on Morris Island. While this demonstration was taking place, two thousand men of Gen. Strong's brigade were to embark in small boats in Folly River, effect a landing on Morris Island, and, at a given signal, attempt to carry Fort Wagner by assault. The batteries on the north end of Folly