Emilio, Luis F., History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry , 1863-1865

We were now firing an average of twenty shells each day into Charleston. The time of firing was purposely varied throughout the day and night, that the Confederates might not be prepared to reply. From ‘Mother Johnson,’ Simkins, and Moultrie we received an average of two hundred shots per day, most of which failed to strike our works. But few casualties were sustained, the warning cry of the lookouts sending all to cover.

Against Sumter our firing was light after November. But on December 11 some two hundred and twenty shots were hurled at that work. While we were firing slowly at 9.30 A. M., the southwest magazine there exploded. Timbers, bricks, and debris, as well as the flag, were shot up into the air, while below arose a black cloud of smoke which streamed out over the harbor. A fire broke out later. The garrison lost on this day eleven men killed and forty-one wounded.

By reference to his official correspondence, it is found that about the middle of December General Gillmore entertained the project of attacking Savannah, and then, with a portion of his force, operating in Florida. He thought that to move with the fleet against Charleston's inner defences, now bristling with guns, either by way of the Stono or Bull's Bay, he should be reinforced with ten thousand or twelve thousand men. He urged that the War Department adopt measures which would enable him to go to work at once.

Calls for fatigue were now lighter and better borne, for seventy-three conscripts arrived for the Fifty-fourth on November 28, and twenty-two recruits on December 4.