Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[118] Colonel John L. Gardner, of the First Regiment of Artillery, in repairing, making additions, and generally strengthening the fort. It was the only one of the four that was garrisoned.

Soutii view of Fort Moultrie.

Fort Sumter, then the largest and by far the best of the strongholds, stands in the middle of the entrance to Charleston Harbor proper, on the southwestern edge of the ship-channel, and nearly three and a half miles from the city. It was a work of solid brick and concrete masonry, a truncated pentagonal in form, and built upon an artificial island resting on a mud-bank. The island was constructed of chips from New England granite-quarries,

Plan of Fort Sumter in 1860.1

carried there during a period of ten consecutive years, at the cost of half a million of dollars. The fort itself cost another half million. The walls were sixty feet in hight, and from eight to twelve feet in thickness, the weakest part being on the south or Morris Island side. It was pierced for three tiers of guns on the north, east, and west sides. The two lower tiers were under bomb-proof casemates. The first was designed for 42-pounder Paixhans, and tie second for 8 and 10-inch Columbiads. The third tier was open, so that the ordnance, to consist of mortars and 24-pounder guns, would be en barbette, or nearly so, there being embrasures. Its complement of heavy guns was one hundred and forty, but only seventy-five were now in the work. For some time a large number of men had been employed in mounting ordnance there, and otherwise putting the fort in order for defense, yet there was no regular garrison to man it.

Fort Johnson, on James Island, directly West from Fort Sumter, was of but little account then as a fortification. It was a relic of the old war for Independence.

In October, 1860, Colonel Gardner was removed from the command in Charleston Harbor, by Floyd, for attempting to increase his supply of ammunition,² and Major Robert Anderson, a native of Kentucky, and a meritorious officer in the war with Mexico, was appointed to succeed him in November. He arrived there on the 20th, and assumed .the command. He was convinced, from the tone of conversation and feeling in Charleston, and the military drills continually going on there, with other preparations of like nature, that the conspirators had resolved to inaugurate a revolution. “That there is a settled determination,” he said, in a letter to Adjutant-General Cooper, on the 23d of November, “to leave the Union and to obtain possession of this ”