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[434]
But to the desultory operations on Fort Wagner a remarkable episode was to take place.
Gen. Gillmore flattered himself that he had discovered the precise point where to establish a battery from which he would be able to batter down the forts in the harbour and even the city of Charleston.
It was said that he had at his disposal pieces whose range and effects surpassed all conception; and Northern newspapers were filled with the story of a new discovery called “the Greek Fire,” which was to be poured upon Charleston, and consume “the cradle of secession.”
The prospect of what such devilish agents of destruction might accomplish was pleasing to many of the Northern people; it was announced that Gillmore was experimenting in liquid fire, that he had made a new style of bombs, and many other pyrotechnic inventions, and that he might soon be expected to “roll his fire-shells through the streets of Charleston.”
The point whence such work was to be accomplished, and where Gillmore thought to discover the vitals of Charleston, was nearly midway between Morris and James Islands, seven thousand yards distant from the lower end of Charleston city.
Here, on the marsh-mud — where a crab might crawl, but where a man would sink in a few minutes to the depth of twenty-five feet--there was prepared a plan of a battery for one 8-inch Parrott rifle (300-pounder). It was a singular achievement of labour and skill.
The work had to be done under cover of darkness, and it was necessary to hide the pieces of wood during the day with grass and sea-weed.
In the night-time piles were driven in the mud-shoa.
which separated the two islands; fifteen thousand bags of sand, about one hundred and ten pounds each, were brought in the vessels to make a terre-plein and a parapet.
The work was executed in fourteen nights, from the 2d till the 18th of August.
After breaking, by its great weight, several trucks, the monster gun was finally hauled up, and placed in position, and Charleston, four miles and a half away, little dreamed that the “Swamp Angel” 1—
The following effusion of a Northern writer gives an explanation of this name, in which blasphemy and devilish hate are united.
The poetry reads like the exultation of a fiend.
The “Swamp Angel” hears the traitor boasting of security, and sends forth its dreadful warning that “nowhere in these United States are traitors safe from the avenging wrath of the Republic.”
Flaunting, and boasting, and brisk, and gay,
The streets of the city shine to-day.
Forts without, our army within,
To think of surrender were deadly sin;
For the foe far over the wave abide,
And no guns can reach o'er the flowing tide.
They can't? Through the air, with a rush and a yell,
Come the screech and the roar of the howling shell;
And the populous city is still alive
With the bees that are leaving the ancient hive;
And the market-places are waste and bare,
And the smoke hangs thick in the poisoned air;
And the ruins alone shall remain to tell
Where the hymn of destruction was sung by the shell!
1866.
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