Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 4.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[491] was made of the old American flag which was flying from her ramparts when Captain Pender and his band of traitors took the post from its solitary guardian, Ordnance-Sergeant Alexander, on the eleventh of April last year. The red and white stripes had been ripped apart, and arranged in the broad bars of the new dispensation. Of the thirty-four stars in the field, those which were not needed to represent the traitorous sister States of the Confederacy were cut out, and the holes left unsewn. The flag which was hoisted in place of this patchwork ensign, was found in the Fort in one of the casemates. It had been taken from the wreck of the steamer Union which went ashore on Bogue beach and was wrecked at the time of the Port Royal expedition. The flag of the confederates was presented by Gen. Burnside to the Fifth battalion, to be transmitted to Gov. Sprague for the State of Rhode Island. But for the accident that the Fifth had relieved the Eighth Connecticut the previous evening, the captured flag would have gone to grace the legislative halls at Hartford.

A message was despatched at once for the Fourth Rhode Island, and sentries were posted on the drawbridge to prevent the entrance of our men into the Fort to disturb the garrison while engaged in packing up their effects. In the course of an hour, the Fourth was marching up the beach, past the batteries, with the regimental colors flying, and Capt. Joe Green's band at their head playing the national airs. The regiment was halted at the foot of the slope, and the band played the Star-Spangled Banner, Red, White and Blue, Hail Columbia, and Yankee Doodle. I had got within the Fort some time previous to this, and, when the band struck up, went to the rampart to see the spectacle. A crowd of the prisoners had been standing or lounging idly behind the revetment, but, on hearing the familiar airs, climbed to the slope, one of them saying: “Let's all be Yankees together, and hear the music.” One surly fellow, who overheard the remark, said: “No; he'd be d — d if he would; he was as near that cursed flag as he wanted to be.”

Previous to the arrival of the Fourth, Joe Green had come on in advance, his silver-toned bugle under his arm as usual, and, when the national colors had been hoisted to the mast-head, he mounted to the rampart and gave us a patriotic solo on the instrument. The sweet notes lingered through the arched casemates and within the walls, as if loth to die away in space, and they touched the heart of many a soldier-auditor. When the grey-headed old man came out at the sally-port again, he was greeted with three rousing cheers from the men of the Fifth battalion, which at this time was the only command there.

A tour of the work.

During the bombardment we could see in only a small degree the effects of the fire of our batteries, but once within the work, the whole secret was laid bare. On every side were the evidences of a violent cannonade; and shattered walls and dismounted guns attested the terrible efficiency of rifled guns and heavy mortars. In the parade were a score of great pits dug by bursting bombs, of which the fragments were strewn on every side. The casemate-fronts were scarred and shattered by Parrott shot. The coping was broken in many places. A solid stone step in one of the staircases which covered the magazines had been bored through and through by one of these terrible projectiles; and the earth of the rampart was ploughed in furrows or scooped out in mass, where they had passed. I sat long on one of the staircases and looked around at the scene of dreary desolation. The parade had once been finely sodded, but it was now bare of verdure except here and there a little patch which clung to life. The walls were yellow-washed, the arches over the windows painted red, and doors and windowframes, once white, were now begrimed with dirt and foul with grease. Before the casemate entrances the bars of iron removed from the railroad which leads to the Fort-wharf, had been leaned against the wall as a protection to the inmates; but at one point the ends of two of these had been cut off by a Parrott shot, which buried itself afterward to the very head in the solid brick. There it is sticking, and there let it stick as long as the walls stand, in memorial of the day. The parade was covered with prisoners and their baggage, and the scene was one of busy animation. With some exceptions, the rebel officers and men were ill clothed, their grey uniforms being made of coarse material, and some well tattered. The men themselves were of strong physique, and might be worked up into good soldiers. They compared favorably with any of the lots of prisoners we have taken. Some of the officers — especially the adjutant — were handsome and of soldierly bearing. Col. White himself is tall, well formed, of dark complexion, has high cheek-bones, brown hair cut short, and wears no beard. He dresses in a light-grey uniform coat with red facings, three stars on the collar and a colonel's chevron on his sleeve; dark-blue trowsers with a broad gold stripe; and the peculiar kepi which is prescribed for the rebel army officers.

A tour of the fortification reveals in detail the damages inflicted during Gen. Parke's ten hours of bombardment. Leaving the sally-port and going to the right on the lower terreplein, we see a hole between the second and third guns, where a shell has burst, a fragment splintering the carriage of the second gun; between the third gun and the angle there are three shell-holes. On the south-west side is the Manny battery, two of the guns on artillery-carriages mounted on wooden platforms. The glacis in front is like a ploughed field, from the number of shot which have struck and shell which have burst. A rifled shot passed lengthwise through the trail of the first gun, broke the elevating screw and killed the gunner as he was sighting the piece. While looking at this curious shot I was accosted by a sergeant of the Fifth battalion, who had formerly worked in the Tribune composing-rooms, and learned from him that six of our printers