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[438] flag still floated over it. It had been held through the siege and cannonade by the First South Carolina Artillery, under Col. Alfred Rhett, until its armament had been disabled; and the services of the artillerymen being elsewhere required, Gen. Beauregard determined that it should be held by infantry. On the night of the 4th September, the Charleston Battalion, under Maj. Blake, relieved the garrison; Maj. Stephen Elliot relieving Col. Rhett in command of the post. On the 7th of September, Admiral Dahlgren, determined to test Gillmore's assertion that Sumter was a “harmless mass of ruins,” summoned the fort to surrender. Gen. Beauregard telegraphed to Maj. Elliot to reply to Dahlgren that he could have Fort Sumter when he took it and held it, and that in the mean time such demands were puerile and unbecoming.

In the evening of the 7th September, the iron-clads and Monitors approached Fort Sumter closer than usual, and opened a hot fire against it. In the night of the 9th September thirty of the launches of the enemy attacked Fort Sumter. Preparations had been made for the event. At a concerted signal, all the batteries bearing on Sumter assisted by one gunboat and a ram, were thrown open. The enemy was repulsed, leaving in our hands one hundred and thirteen prisoners, including thirteen officers. There were also taken four boats and three colours, and the original flag of Fort Sumter, which Maj. Anderson was compelled to lower in 1861, and which Dahlgren had hoped to replace.

After this repulse of the Federals in their last attack upon Fort Sumter, but little more was done during the year by the enemy, except bombarding the forts and shelling Charleston at intervals during day and night, until this became so customary that it no longer excited dismay or was an occasion of alarm to even women and children. The city was intact and safe; Gillmore had expended many thousand lives and thrown shell enough to build several iron-clads to obtain a position that proved worthless; Admiral Dahlgren feared the destruction of a fleet which had cost so much sacrifice, and refused to ascend the harbour; and the demonstration upon Charleston degenerated into the desultory record of a fruitless bombardment. The Northern public appeared to sicken of the experiment of Parrott guns and monster artillery, and read with disgust the daily bulletins of how many hundred useless shots had been fired, and of how much ammunition had been grandly expended in a great noise to little purpose. “How many times,” asked an indignant Philadelphia paper, “has Fort Sumter been taken? How many times has Charleston been burned? How often have the people been on the eve of starvation and surrender? How many times has the famous Greek Fire poured the rain of Sodom and the flames of hell upon the secession city? We cannot keep the count --but those can who rang the bells and put out the flags, and invoked the imprecations, and rejoiced at the story of conflagration and ruin.”

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