Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 5.
Frank Moore, Ed.

---

[50] Her services were immediately offered to Gen. Arnold, to transport troops to the main land, and she was thus employed all day yesterday and this forenoon. About twelve hundred troops, together with a large amount of light artillery, siege-guns, ammunition, camp equipage, horses and supplies, have been conveyed across the channel, and are now actively employed in establishing themselves upon the “sacred soil.” They have thrown up defences, planted cannon, and taken every measure to prevent a surprise, in case the enemy should attempt to repossess the forts, of which, however, there is not the slightest fear. The confederates have abandoned Florida, and I doubt if five hundred rebel soldiers can be found in the State to-day.

Last evening, Lieut. L. L. James, Second artillery, of Gen. Arnold's staff, with a boat's crew, crossed the channel to Fort McRae. Lieut. James raised the Stars and Stripes on the staff where the confederate rag has so long hung. A salute was fired in honor of the old ensign, and three cheers given for the Union and three for the flag. The Fort presented a sad spectacle of charred and smoking timbers, blackened walls and demolished masonry. The timber-flooring in all the casemates, which had sustained the upper tier of guns, was entirely consumed, as were the gates of the main salle porte, and the timbers of the blindages. Only three pieces of ordnance remained in the Fort--two thirty-two-pounders, from one of which a shot had been discharged during the conflagration, and the casemate howitzer, both spiked and dismounted. In the land-battery adjoining the Fort were found two pieces of peculiarly constructed rebel artillery, of the usual inoffensive character, but which occupied the places of two heavy rifled cannon which had been removed. The “Quakers” were the merest shams — not logs, but constructed of two wooden wheels for muzzle and breech, wooden slats forming the body of the piece.

The light-house was set on fire, but only slightly injured. Fort Barrancas sustained little injury from the vandals, owing to the incessant shower of grape poured into that work from Fort Pickens. It was damaged more by the bombardment of December and January than by the rebels, but still is in excellent condition. The redoubt is untouched. Casemates in the counterscarp gallery, in the old Spanish battery, and the redoubt in the rear of Fort Barrancas, are uninjured. Barrancas Barracks, an immense pile on the right of the Fort, escaped the torch of the incendiaries; but the magnificent naval hospital, said to be the finest structure of the kind in the United States, lies a mass of smouldering ruins. It was behind this hospital that Bragg had a heavy mortar battery during the first bombardment, and shielded from the fire of Pickens by the humane folds of the yellow flag which floated over the hospital, he kept up an incessant fire upon the Federal garrison. So general was the ruin of the towns of Woolsey and Warrington from the two bombardments, that there seemed but little remaining to feed the conflagration.

No minute examination has been made of these villages, but it is reported that neither of them has suffered severely by the evacuation.

The Navy-Yard presents a scene of ruin and desolation. Smoke and flames still rise from the burning timbers of the extensive store-houses, work-shops, and the wharves, all of which are destroyed. The skeleton frame of the old Fulton has vanished into thin air, and the stocks where she stood so long are now an ash-heap. The splendid granite dock appears to be unharmed, and its wooden duplicate lies a wreck under Deer Island. The shears are standing in the yard. The foundry-building and the blacksmith-shop are safe, and the tall chimney still erect. The rebels made every preparation to burn the Custom-House, but were probably driven away by the fire from Fort Pickens, as it is uninjured. All the government buildings outside the yard were burned.

The rebels removed all the heavy columbiads from the forts and batteries, but left many forty-two-pounders. When the fire broke out, twenty guns were seen in position from Fort Pickens.

The rebels left the keys of the magazines of McRae and Barrancas, and of the gates of the latter Fort, hanging against the walls outside, as if to invite their successors to walk in and take possession. But our troops were not to be caught with that chaff. The disposition of the keys had too much the appearance of a sinister design; and with a wariness which marks the true soldier, when venturing into the enemy's country, they avoided the trap which may have been laid to blow them up, and instead of entering the Fort by the main passage, they scaled the walls. The magazines of both forts will be excavated, in order to ascertain if the rebels left any infernal mechanism by which to destroy the Federals.

Bragg took away with him, in march, a large rifled cannon and ten-inch columbiad, which constituted the light-house battery. The armaments of the different batteries and forts at Pensacola at the time of the bombardment, as near as it can be ascertained, were as follows. There were forty-two guns on the island on which Fort McRae is situated, including the armament of that work and the water-batteries. There was a battery of two ten-inch mortars, and another of two ten-inch columbiads, just above the residence of Col. Chase, which also mounted between them three forty-twos and two eight-inch guns. The light-house battery, rendered famous by the destructive fire it poured into Pickens during the January bombardment, remains intact. The guns have been removed. In the rear of the light-house was a mortar, supposed to be a ten-inch sea-coast.

There were four batteries between the light-house and Barrancas, which mounted seven forty-twos and five eight-inch columbiads. Between Fort Barrancas and the barracks were four forty-twos in two batteries, which are still there, besides four ten-inch columbiads, which had been removed. Next to the hospital battery, to which I have referred, were four eight-inch columbiads,