| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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The palmettos give the place a sort of tropical feel, a lot like the rest of Charleston. The fort itself is a minor part of history, though it was the place from which Fort Sumter was shelled.
It was part of a set of coastal defense forts set up to hold off the British in 1776. In June of that year it held off nine warships saving Charleston from invasion by sea. The British came within 4000 feet, but were held off. The fortification was made of palmetto logs as just what was near at hand, but their fibrous interior proved to be just what was needed to hold off bullets. Only three hundred men turn the British fleet out of these waters.
In 1780 the British bypassed Moultrie, and Charleston fell to them. The fort was destroyed by storms, as was its successor which was built in 1798 and lasted just six years.
Another fort was built on the site in 1809. In 1840 Fort Sumter was built on an island in the middle of the bay. It was in the disagreement of whether Sumter would be a Federal fort or belong to South Carolina that sparked the Civil War. It was Moultrie that shelled Fort Sumter. The Civil War was the last real action the fort saw, though it was mobilized in 1901 for the Spanish-American War. It continued to be used to protect Charleston through the end of World War II (when it controlled Troop movements in and out of Charleston). After that there seemed little purpose and it was turned over to the National Park Service.
The Visitors Center has a twenty-minute film, then we explored the fort ourselves. We did not have time to finish it and make the 10:30 AM boat to Fort Sumter so we left at 10 AM, deciding to finish later.
We drove back to Patriots Point to pick up the boat to Sumter. A fellow traveler has a T-shirt that says '100% Hard-core Jesus Freak. I may be strange but I'll never change.' It almost sounds like he thinks it is a minority opinion and some sort of a daring statement. And I guess if he thinks that he is making a strange or daring statement, he is strange.
On to Sumter.
This is it. The beginning of the Civil War. Going from Shiloh to Vicksburg to Chickamauga to Chattanooga to Kennesaw we had a sort of continuity in this trip. It was one long story. Now we are going back and picking up the first chapter. Gettysburg was originally planned, but we will make that a separate weekend trip. We went through Atlanta, which would have been a sort of culmination, but there were no battlefields to visit. All Atlanta was a battlefield. The way you see that now is that it looks pretty new. There are lesser sections but like Dallas, Atlanta looks like generally a nice place to live. That may be in part because Sherman wiped it mostly away and they had to start over. But this is the story of the first shots.
South Carolina did not want to see a Republican elected to the Presidency of the United States. In 1860 Lincoln was elected and South Carolina decided it wanted no part of the resulting Union. South Carolina left the Union very early in 1861. Once South Carolina seceded from the Union, it seemed likely that the first danger spot of conflict would be Fort Sumter. It sat off Charleston and was held by Major Robert Anderson, a Kentuckian, but a man who did not want to see the Union broken up. He quietly moved his men from Fort Moultrie and had occupied the fort on December 26, 1860. South Carolina claimed that this action was an act of war. Most of the North considered Anderson a hero and just doing his duty to the government in a non-belligerent way. Jefferson Davis went to Washington to complain to President Buchanan. The latter decided to do nothing and let his successor, Abraham Lincoln handle things. Meanwhile South Carolina artillery fired on an unarmed supply ship that quietly turned tail. These were the first shots of the war. By February 1 there were seven states who had seceded. They sent representatives to Montgomery, Alabama and there in the State House they elected Jefferson Davis to be President of the new country, the Confederate States of America. On March 4, Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States of America. The two adversaries were in place.
The Governor of South Carolina handed over responsibility to Jefferson Davis and Buchanan handed it over to Lincoln at his inauguration. Davis sent General Pierre Beauregard to head the militia. Lincoln was torn on what to do. Fighting would start a war, withdrawing the men would anger his party. And the men in Sumter were running out of food and supplies. Beauregard sent a message demanding Anderson's surrender. Anderson said in a helpful way he could not surrender, but his supplies would run out on April 15 and he would have to abandon Sumter at that time.
Lincoln decided to restock Sumter with unarmed supply boats. Then if they were fired upon, it would be the South that started hostilities against a peaceful mission and if not, then at least the deadline when the fort ran out of supplies would be pushed off. He did not consider re-supplying a fort from unarmed boats a provocative act. He was wrong.
Davis decided that Sumter had to be taken before Lincoln could re-supply it. On April 12, 1861, at 3:20 AM, Beauregard sent a message to Anderson saying he would have to surrender. Anderson did not respond. At 4:30 AM war started in earnest with a mortar shell from Fort Moultrie fired over the fort. Beauregard got an opportunity to demonstrate his artillery skills to his old West Point artillery teacher, Anderson who was now on the receiving end of what he had taught. For thirty-three hours the fort was bombarded. Toward the end Beauregard started sending heated cannonballs in the hopes of starting fires. The fort was set afire and there was danger of it setting the powder magazine on fire. Anderson found he could fight the fire or fight Beauregard but not both. He surrendered with only one fatality. (Actually there were none until the Federals started to leave, the Confederates wanted to salute their bravery and gave them a gun salute. There was some sort of accident.)
The news that fighting had broken out galvanized the North and the South. Each side was thrilled at the prospect of a short exciting war in which the other side was quickly taught a lesson, but nobody would be hurt badly. Both were destined to be disappointed. The great disillusionment would be at First Manassas.
Sumter remained in Confederate hands until the end of the war. It became a symbol of the secession. One morning very shortly after the war ended, April 14, 1865, Anderson returned to Sumter and again raised the Federal Flag. It would have made a great news story. However that evening some American President got himself shot watching a play.
We took a boat out to the island talking to fellow passengers including some real Civil War bugs. They were surprised that we did not have relatives in the war. You are left on the island for an hour. We explored the fort taking our share of pictures. You can see Fort Moultrie looking ominous in the distance over the water, east by northeast. The hour goes quickly.
The boat on the way and back offers a nice view of the Charleston skyline. But it also offers a view that we do not get from home. This is pelicans. They are fascinating birds to watch. In flights they look like something prehistoric. They look like pterodactyls. In fact, I think there is a scene at the end of Jurassic Park (the movie) where Sam Neill watches a flock of pelicans. They patrol over the water, probably hunting. Suddenly they will cannonball onto the surface. They look like they have crashed but they probably have actually just found lunch. They sit on the water for a little while, they take off and fly again. I would have liked to get a good photograph of a pelican in flight, but I never was lucky enough to get a good view in time.
After we returned to the mainland we had a quick lunch at Taco Bell. Then we returned to Fort Moultrie for the little bit we had not seen. Most of what we saw was not that interesting, but we did see the launching point of the H. L. Hunley.
A train had brought the H. L. Hunley from Mobile to the base of Fort Moultrie. The description on the box called it a 'veritable coffin.' It was only half a joke. Late night on February 7, 1864, the H. L. Hunley set out from Sullivan's Island. The Hunley was an eight-man submarine. Eight men operated a camshaft that propelled the boat. At the end of the submarine was a pole with an explosive charge. The Hunley had already proved itself deadly. It had killed a crew of five. In a later test it killed a crew of eight.
The latter crew included its inventor Horace L. Hunley, advocate of submarines for the Confederacy. There was just not enough oxygen inside for its crew. But Beauregard was desperate to find a way to break the Northern blockade. It had been a peaceful night for the Housatonic when the officer of the deck saw something that looked like a log next to the boat. But it moved unnaturally. It was too close to aim the guns. They could only wait while the strange craft drilled a hole in the side of the Housatonic and set a charge. The Housatonic sank with a loss of five crew members. At least people knew where it went. The Hunley disappeared and was not heard from again. It has recently been found at some distance away and still stuck in silt. The Housatonic was the first boat in history to be sunk by a submarine.
That was it for what we had planned in Charleston, though in truth it was more in Mt. Pleasant. We headed to North Carolina. The number of palmetto trees fell off rapidly.
We got a room at a Super 8 outside Charlotte. Then went out to eat. It was about a twenty-minute drive, but we found a Thai restaurant. The water tasted funny. I did not want too much. But when the food came it was aces. Evelyn got some sort of yellow chicken curry. I got a ground chicken dish. I have never had a bad Thai dish, at home or in Thailand. I don't think the Thais ever learned to make dishes that weren't great.
It just isn't in their culture. Hey, but I have heard their economy is failing. They seemed in good condition when I was there. and they were such nice people.
We came back in time to hear most of the History Channel's program on the Black Death, then the last fifty minutes of The Miracle Worker. Evelyn and I have a discussion on when a baby starts associating a word with the object.
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09/18/97--Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina: Museums:
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Well, this chunk of vacation that seemed inexhaustible the first few days now has been whittled down to the length of a Thanksgiving weekend. Four days left. This has been a really long vacation using up some leftover vacation from previous years and pretty much all our vacation from this year. And what will we have to show for it? Well, I will have this log so I can go back and feel it again. Just as I am writing we passed the 8/9 point on the trip and we have 1/9 left to go. (I have a spreadsheet that figures it for me.)
Breakfast was decent. The guy who ran it had doughnuts in a Tupperware box. He would take them out of a Crispy Creme box, three at a time to make sure nobody over-indulged. With the juice nobody would have made that mistake. I think it was Tang made at half strength. The cereal was in a canister that poured out a pre-measured bowl. Also the ice machine made you pay twenty-five cents. That was our first pay ice machine in a motel. You get to be a connoisseur of ice machines. The best is a Scotsman. On those you press a button and a hopper fills up. Perhaps the ones with a big bin that fills with ice are as good, but you don't know how long the ice has been there.
Well, we have come to the end of the good weather. I think today is supposed to be a rainy day. Not periods of rain, but actually rainy. |
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