Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[210] begun to leave it and Battery Gregg before midnight, and had fled from Cummings's Point in boats so precipitately that all but seventy escaped. During forty hours no less than one hundred and twenty-two thousand pounds of iron, in the form of balls and shells, each weighing not less than one hundred pounds, had been rained upon the fort, and yet its bomb-proof, capable of sheltering eighteen hundred men,¹ was but little injured. The symmetry of the fort was destroyed, but it was soon put into proper shape. An apparatus for blowing up the magazine when the victors should enter the fort, was happily discovered and destroyed. The nineteen heavy guns left in Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg, with others, were speedily turned on the harbor defenses and the city of Charleston. The captured forts were strengthened and heavily armed, and other works were soon erected. These were all a mile nearer the city than the “Swamp angel,” and commanded its wharves and full one half of the town. Blockade running was effectually stopped, and Charleston, properly called “the Cradle of Secession,” was made a desolation in the world of business.² “You now hold in undisputed possession the whole of Morris Island,” said Gillmore, in a congratulatory address to his troops on the 15th, “and the city and harbor of Charleston lie at the mercy of your artillery from the very spot where the first shot was fired at your dountry's flag, and the rebellion itself was inaugurated.” ³

Gillmore expected the iron-clad squadron to force its way past Fort Sumter into the inner harbor and up to the city, as soon as that fortress was effectually silenced, but Dahlgren did not think it prudent to do so, chiefly because he believed the channels to be swarming with torpedoes. But immediately after the capture of Fort Wagner, a portion of the men of the squadron attempted the important enterprise of surprising and capturing Fort Sumter without Gillmore's knowledge. For this purpose about thirty row-boats, filled with armed men, were towed close to Fort Sumter on the night of the 8th,

Sept., 1862.

where they were cast off, and made their way to the base of the shattered walls. The expedition was in charge of Commander Stephens, of the Patapsco, and when the boats reached the fort, the crews of three of them, led by Commander Williams, Lieutenant Renny, and Ensign Porter, scaled the steep ruin, with the belief that the garrison was sleeping. It was wide awake, for the vigilant Major S. Elliott⁴ was in command; and at the moment when the bold adventurers were expecting to win victory and renown, they were greeted with musket-balls and hand grenades, and the fire of neighboring batteries, a gun-boat and a ram, which made havoc among the men and boats. Two hundred of the assailants were killed, wounded, or captured, with four boats and three colors, and the remainder escaped.