Defence of Fort Sumter.
Defence of Fort Sumter.
When darkness came on Sumter closed its port-holes and rested, but the Rebels, like spirits of evil, were at work through the night.
The second day dawned, and all the cannon were roaring again. The barracks were on fire, the smoke curling into the casemates, the hot stifling air reaching the gunners, who, wrapping themselves in wet cloths, and covering their faces, crept along the passages, rolling casks of powder into the sea. What delight on shore to see the flames mount above the walls! With what energy Moultrie, Pinckney, and Morris Island and the floating battery redoubled their fire. All but three of Anderson's cartridges were gone. The flagstaff was shot away. "The flag is down!" is the cry within the fort. Up into the storm, where the shot and shell are falling, walks Lieutenant Hall, planting the flag upon the parapet, where it waves till Wigfall appears at a port-hole. Then the parley,—the surrender,—and Charleston was excited as never before or since. Men and women on the house-tops, and gathered in church-steeples; business at a stand still, champagne flowing like water, costliest wines quaffed at the expense of merchants of New York; bells ringing, guns firing, ladies waving their handkerchiefs,—the city all aglow with bonfires in the evening; crowds surging through the streets, or drinking whiskey in the bar-rooms: Beauregard the Napoleon of the new era. Governor Pickens addressed the mob from the balcony of the Charleston Hotel:—
"It is a glorious and exultant occasion. Fellow-citizens, I clearly saw that the day was coming when we would triumph beyond the power of man to put us down. Thank God the day has come,—thank God the war is open, and we will conquer or perish! We have defeated their twenty millions, and we have made the proud flag of the stars and stripes, that never was lowered before to any nation on this earth,—we have lowered it in humility before the glorious little State of South Carolina!"[90]
Intoxicated with wine and whiskey, delirious with success, insane with Secession, the jubilant crowd cheer and drink, and shout again, bidding defiance to the government, and cursing the Yankees.
Four years pass, and Sumter is repossessed by the troops of the Union. How cheering the sight to behold once more the crimson folds and fadeless stars of our country's flag waving in the sunlight over the crumbled walls!
Early in the morning we entered the harbor,—General Gillmore and staff, General Webster, chief of General Sherman's staff, with several gentlemen and ladies from Port Royal. The blockading fleet and the monitors were steaming in, their long watch through the sweltering days of summer and the stormy nights of winter at an end. They were feeling their way up the channel searching for torpedoes.
The steamer Deer, built on the Clyde, a few hours from Nassau, with an assorted cargo,—a low, rakish, fast-running craft, with steam escaping from her pipes,—was lying under the guns of a monitor. She had worked her way in during the night. The crestfallen captain was chewing the cud of disappointment on the quarter-deck, looking gloomily seaward the while, and doubtless wishing himself in the harbor of Nassau. Two nights before the Syren had passed in. The wreck of a third blockade-runner was lying on the sands of Sullivan's Island, near Moultrie, which months before had been run ashore by the fleet. The tide was surging through the cabin windows. Barnacles had fastened upon the hull, and long tresses of green, dank seaweed hung trailing from the iron paddle-wheels. It was a satisfaction to know that the time was at hand when Englishmen at Nassau would have to shut up shop.
We glided along the shore of Morris Island, white with tents. What heroic valor on those sands,—the assault upon Wagner, the slow, persistent excavation of the trenches, the unremitting vigilance and energy, the endurance which had forced the evacuation of Morris Island,—the turning of the guns of Wagner upon Sumter, the planting of the "Swamp-Angel" battery,—the first shell sent streaming into the city, startling the inhabitants, and awaking the unpleasant conviction that the Yankees were at their doors! So memory ran over the historic events, as we swept up the channel.
The steamer could not approach near the landing, and we were taken to the fort in small boats. We reached the interior through a low, narrow passage.
The fort bore little resemblance to its former appearance, externally or internally. None of the original face of the wall was to be seen, except on the side towards Charleston and a portion of that facing Moultrie. From the harbor and from Wagner it appeared only a tumulus,—thedébrisof an old ruin. All the casemates, arches, pillars, and parapets were torn up and utterly demolished. The great guns which two years before kept the monitors at bay, which flamed and thundered awhile upon Wagner, were dismounted, broken, and partially buried beneath the mountain of brick, dust, concrete, sand, and mortar. After Dupont's attack, in April, 1863, a reinforcement of palmetto-logs was made on the harbor side, and against half of the wall facing Moultrie, and the lower casemates were filled with sand-bags; but when General Gillmore obtained possession of Wagner, his fire began to crumble the parapet. The Rebels endeavored to maintain its original height by gabions filled with sand, but this compelled a widening of the base inside by sand-bags, thousands of which were brought to the fort at night. Day after day, week after week, the pounding from Wagner was maintained so effectually that it was impossible to keep a gun in position on the side of Sumter fronting it, and the only guns remaining mounted were five or six on the side towards Moultrie, in the middle tier of casemates. Five howitzers were kept on the walls to repel an attack by small boats, the garrison keeping under cover, or seeking shelter whenever the lookout cried, "A shot!"
Cheveaux-de-friseof pointed sticks protected the fort from a scaling party. At the base outside was a barrier of interlaced wire, supported by iron posts. There was also a submerged network of wire and chains, kept in place by floating buoys.
I had the curiosity to make an inspection of the wall nearest Moultrie, to see what had been the effect of the fire of the ironclads in Dupont's attack. With my glass at that time I could see that the wall was badly honeycombed; a close inspection now proved that the fire was very damaging. There were seams in the masonry, and great gashes where the solid bolts crumbled the bricks to dust. It was evident that if the fire had been continued any considerable length of time the wall would have fallen. Its effect suggested the necessity of filling up the lower casemates.
An hour was passed in the fort, the band playing national airs, and the party inspecting the ruins and gathering relics.
Captain James of the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth, aide to General Gillmore, was wounded in the assault on Wagner. He gazed at the ruins with a satisfaction not unmixed with melancholy, for beneath the sands of Morris Island was lying his beloved commander, Colonel Shaw.
The Rebels had refused to give up his body. "Let him lie buried beneath his niggers," was their answer to the request. And there he lies beside the brave men who followed him to death and glory, having won an immortal name no less as the commander of the first negro regiment sent to the war than by his gentle bearing as a man and bravery as a soldier. His acceptance of the command of the despised men who gladly enlisted when called to the field required at the time a devotion to principle and a decision of character, to face the gibes and sneers flung at him by negro-haters in his rear, greater than the courage to meet the enemy at the front. But he nobly led the way, and silenced every carping tongue.
For four long years the cannon of Sumter had hurled defiance at the rights of man; but the contest now was ended. Eternal principles had prevailed against every effort of Rebel hate to crush them. The strong earthworks on Sullivan's and Johnson's islands, the batteries in the harbor, Castle Pinckney and Fort Ripley, and those in the city erected by slaves, were useless forever, except as monuments of folly and wickedness. As I stood there upon the ruins of Sumter, looking down into the crater, the past like a panorama was unrolled, exhibiting the mighty events which will forever make it memorable. The silent landing of Major Anderson at the postern gate, the midnight prayer and solemn consecration of the little band to defend the flag till the last, the long weeks of preparation by the Rebels, the Star of the West turning her bow seaward, the 12th of April, the barracks on fire, the supplies exhausted, the hopelessness of success, the surrender, and all that had followed, were vivid memories of the moment.
How inspiring to hear the music of the band, to behold the numerous vessels of the fleet decorated from bowsprit to yardarm and topmast with flags and streamers, to recall the heroicsacrifices of those who had fought through the weary years, to know that Sumter, Moultrie, the city, and the State were redeemed from the worst system of vassalage, that our country was still a nation, renewed and regenerated by its baptism of fire and blood, that truth and right were vindicated before the world; and to look down the coming years, and know that Freedom was secured to all beneath the folds of the flag that had withstood the intrigues of cabals and the shock of battle, and that Christianity and civilization, twin agents of human progress, had received an impetus that would forever keep us in the van of nations.
For our Flag.
For our Flag.
Looking at that flag, involuntarily I repeated the words of the song which I heard when the shadows of night fell upon the gory field of Antietam, sung by our wounded in one of the hospitals:—
"Our flag is there! our flag is there!We hail it with three loud huzzas!Our flag is there! our flag is there!Behold the glorious stripes and stars!Stout hearts have fought for that bright flag,Strong hands sustained it masthead high,And O, to see how proud it waves,Brings tears of joy to every eye!"
Feb., 1865.
A city of ruins,—silent, mournful, in deepest humiliation. It was early morning when we reached the wharf, piled with merchandise, not busy with commercial activity as in other days, but deserted, its timbers rotting, its planks decayed, its sheds tumbling in and reeling earthward. The slips, once crowded with steam and sailing vessels, were now vacant, except that an old sloop with a worm-eaten gunwale, tattered sails, and rigging hanging in shreds, alone remained.
A few fishermen's dories only were rocking on the waves, tethered to the wharves by rotten ropes, where the great cotton Argosies in former years had shipped or landed their cargoes.
Before the sailors had time to make fast the steamer, myself and friend[91]were up the pier. The band was playing "Hail, Columbia," and the strains floated through the desolate city, awakening wild enthusiasm in the hearts of the colored people, who came rushing down the grass-grown streets to welcome us.
When near the upper end of the pier we encountered an old man bending beneath the weight of seventy years,—such years as slavery alone can pile upon the soul. He bowed very low.
"Are you not afraid of us Yankees?"
"No, massa, God bless you. I have prayed many a night for you to come, and now you are here. Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord!"
He kneeled, clasped my hand, and with streaming eyes poured out his thanks to God.
Let us, before entering upon a narrative of military incidents, look at Charleston as she was at the beginning of theRebellion, when the great cotton mart of the Atlantic coast, with lines of steamships to New York and Boston. Then her wharves not only were piled with bales of cotton and tierces of rice, or with goods from the warehouses and manufactories of New England and Great Britain, but, next to New Orleans, she was the most populous city of the South, and, in proportion to the number of inhabitants, the wealthiest. Her banks and insurance offices were as stable as those of Wall Street. She aspired to be the commercial emporium of the South. The newspapers of Charleston taught the people to believe that Secession and non-intercourse with the North would make the city the rival of New York. She first adopted the vagaries of her own son, Calhoun, on the rights of States. She proclaimed cotton king, not of America, but of the world, and in her pride believed that all nations could be brought to do her homage. She was rich and aristocratic, and looked upon the people of the North with contempt.
"The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Huguenots," wrote De Bow, "who settled the South, naturally hate, contemn, and despise the Puritans, who settled the North. The former are master races; the latter a slave race, descendants of the Anglo-Saxon serfs."
Through ignorance and vanity such assertions were accepted as truths. Boys and girls of the common schools of the North could have shown that, in the contests between the Cavaliers and Puritans, the Cavaliers were defeated; that the Jacobites went down before the party which placed William of Orange on the throne.
Charleston called the people of South Carolina into council. TheMercury—that able but wicked advocate of Secession—threw out from its windows this motto: "One voice and millions of strong arms to uphold the honor of South Carolina!" Not the honor of the nation or of the people, but of South Carolina,—the Mephistopheles of the Confederacy, the seducer of States. With honeyed words, and well-timed flattery she detached State after State from the Union.
"Whilst constituting a portion of the United States," said South Carolina, in her address to the slaveholding States, "it has beenyourstatesmanship which has guided it in its mightystrides to power and expansion. In the field and in the cabinetyouhave led the way to renown and grandeur."
The ministers of her churches were foremost in abetting the Rebellion. Church and State, merchant and planter, all from high to low of the white population, brought themselves to believe that their influence was world-wide, through King Cotton and his prime minister, African Slavery. Hence the arrogance, fierce intolerance, and mad hate which had their only prototypes in the Rebellion of the Devil and his angels against Beneficent Goodness.
The siege of Charleston was commenced on the 21st of August, 1863, by the opening of the "Swamp-Angel" battery. On the 7th of September Fort Wagner was taken, and other guns were trained upon the city, compelling the evacuation of the lower half. For fourteen months it had been continued; not a furious bombardment, but a slow, steady fire from day to day. About thirteen thousand shells had been thrown into the town,—nearly a thousand a month.
They were fired at a great elevation, and were plunging shots,—striking houses on the roof and passing down from attic to basement, exploding in the chambers, cellars, or in the walls. The effect was a complete riddling of the houses. Brick walls were blown into millions of fragments, roofs were torn to pieces; rafters, beams, braces, scantlings, were splintered into jack-straws. Churches, hotels, stores, dwellings, public buildings, and stables, all were shattered. There were great holes in the ground, where cart-loads of earth had been excavated in a twinkling.
In 1860 the population of the city was 48,509,—26,969 whites, 17,655 slaves, and 3,885 free colored. The first flight from the city was in December, 1861, when Port Royal fell into the hands of Dupont; but when it was found that the opportunity afforded at that time for an advance inland was not improved, most of those who had moved away returned. The attack of Dupont upon Sumter sent some flying again; but not till the messengers of the "Swamp Angel" dropped among them did the inhabitants think seriously of leaving. Some went to Augusta, others to Columbia, others to Cheraw. Many wealthy men bought homes in the country. The upperpart of the city was crowded. Men of fortune who had lived in princely style were compelled to put up with one room. Desolation had been coming on apace. The city grew old rapidly, and had become the completest ruin on the continent. There were from ten to fifteen thousand people still remaining in it, two thirds of whom were colored.
When Sherman flanked Orangeburg, Hardee, who commanded the Rebels in Charleston, saw that he must evacuate the place. There was no alternative; he must give up Sumter, Moultrie, and the proud old city to the Yankees. It was bitter as death! A few of the heavy guns were sent off to North Carolina, all the trains which could be run on the railroad were loaded with ammunition and commissary supplies, the guns in the forts were spiked, and the troops withdrawn.
The inhabitants had been assured that the place should be defended to the last; and in theCourieroffice we found the following sentence in type, which had been set up not twenty-four hours before the evacuation: "There are no indications that our authorities have the first intention of abandoning Charleston, as I have ascertained from careful inquiry!" Duplicity to the end.
The Rebellion was inaugurated through deception, and had been sustained by an utter disregard of truth.
Friday and Saturday were terrible days. Carts, carriages, wagons, horses, mules, all were brought into use. The railroad trains were crowded. Men, women, and children fled, terror-stricken, broken-hearted, humbled in spirit, from their homes. How different from the 12th of April, 1861, when they stood upon the esplanade of the battery, sat upon the house-tops, clustered in the steeples, looking seaward, shouting and waving their handkerchiefs as the clouds of smoke and forked flames rolled up from Sumter!
"God don't pay at the end of every week, but he pays at last, my Lord Cardinal," said Anne of Austria.
General Hardee remained in the city till Friday night, the 17th instant, when he retired with the army, leaving a detachment of cavalry to destroy what he could not remove. Every building and shed in which cotton had been stored was fired on Saturday morning. The ironclads "Palmetto State,""Chicora," and "Charleston" were also given to the flames. They lay at the wharves, and had each large quantities of powder and shell on board. General Hardee knew that the explosions of the magazines would send a storm of fire upon the city. He knew it would endanger the lives of thousands; but what cared he? Governor McGrath called upon the people to destroy their houses. The newspapers pointed to Moscow as a sublime instance of heroic devotion. Human life, the wailing of infants, the feebleness of old age, weighed nothing with Hampton, Hardee, McGrath, General Lee, or Jeff Davis.
The torch was applied early on the morning of the 18th. The citizens sprang to the fire-engines and succeeded in extinguishing the flames in several places; but in other parts of the city the fire had its own way, burning till there was nothing more to devour. On the wharf of the Savannah Railroad depot were several hundred bales of cotton and several thousand bushels of rice. On Lucas Street, in a shed, were twelve hundred bales of cotton. There were numerous other sheds all filled. Near by was the Lucas mill, containing thirty thousand bushels of rice, and Walker's warehouse, with a large amount of commissary stores, all of which were licked up by the fire so remorselessly kindled.
At the Northeastern Railroad depot there was an immense amount of cotton which was fired. The depot was full of commissary supplies and ammunition, powder in kegs, shells, and cartridges. The people rushed in to obtain the supplies. Several hundred men, women, and children were in the building when the flames reached the ammunition and the fearful explosion took place, lifting up the roof and bursting out the walls, and scattering bricks, timbers, tiles, beams, through the air; shells crashed through the panic-stricken crowd, followed by the shrieks and groans of the mangled victims lying helpless in the flames, burning to cinders in the all-devouring element. Nor was this all. At the wharves were the ironclads, burning, torn, rent, scattered over the water and land,—their shells and solid shot, iron braces, red-hot iron plates, falling in an infernal shower, firing the wharves, the buildings, and all that could burn.
There was more than this. Two magnificent Blakely guns—oneat the battery, the other near the gas-works on Cooper River—were loaded to the muzzle and trains laid to burst them. The concussion shattered all the houses in the immediate vicinity.
The buildings near the Northeastern depot were swept away. All the houses embraced in the area of four squares disappeared. The new bridge leading to James Island was destroyed, the fire eating its way slowly from pier to pier through the day. The citizens did their utmost to stay the flames, but from sunrise to sunset on Saturday, all through Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday, the fire burned. How fearful this retribution for crime! Abandoned by those who had cajoled and deceived them, who had brought about their calamity, while swearing to defend them to the last, humbled, reduced from affluence to poverty, the people of Charleston were compelled to endure the indescribable agony of those days.
Colonel Bennett, commanding the Twenty-First United States Colored Troops on Morris Island, seeing signs of evacuation on Saturday morning, the 18th, hastened up the harbor in boats with his regiment, landing at the South Atlantic wharf.
"In the name of the United States government," was his note to the Mayor, "I demand the surrender of the city of which you are the executive officer. Until further orders, all citizens will remain in their houses."
The mayor, meanwhile, had despatched a deputation to Morris Island with formal intelligence of the evacuation.
"My command," wrote Colonel Bennett, "will render every possible assistance to your well-disposed citizens in extinguishing the flames."
The Twenty-First United States Colored Troops was made up of the old Third and Fourth South Carolina regiments, and many of them were formerly slaves in the city of Charleston. They were enlisted at a time when public sentiment was against them, in the winter of 1862-63. I was at Port Royal then, and they were employed in the quartermaster's department. They were sneered at and abused by officers and men belonging to white regiments; but Colonel Bennett continued steadfast in his determination, obtained arms after a long struggle, in which he was seconded by Colonel Littlefield, Inspector-Generalof colored troops in the department. Colonel Bennett had organized four companies of the Third and Colonel Littlefield four companies of the Fourth. The two commands were united and numbered as the Twenty-First United States Colored Troops. They went to Morris Island in 1863, took part in two or three engagements, and proved themselves good soldiers of the Union. It was their high privilege to be first in the city. The stone which the builders rejected once in the history of the world became the head stone of the corner; and in like manner the poor, despised, rejected African race, which had no rights, against whom the city of Charleston plotted iniquity and inaugurated treason, marched into the city to save it from destruction! Following the Twenty-First was a detachment of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts.
"Let him lie buried beneath his niggers!" Stung by the insult to the memory of their lamented commander and by the sneer at themselves, will they not now wreak their vengeance on the ill-fated city? It is their hour for retaliation. But they harbor in their hearts no malice or revenge. Conscious of their manhood, they are glad of another opportunity of showing it.
The soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth have proved their prowess on the field of battle; they have met the chivalry of South Carolina face to face, and shown their equality in courage and heroism, and on this ever-memorable day they make manifest to the world their superiority in honor and humanity.
Let the painter picture it. Let the poet rehearse it. With the old flag above them, keeping step to freedom's drum-beat, up the grass-grown streets, past the slave-marts where their families and themselves have been sold in the public shambles, laying aside their arms, working the fire-engines to extinguish the flames, and, in the spirit of the Redeemer of men, saving that which was lost.
"It was the intention of some of our officers to destroy the city," said one of the citizens; "they not only set it on fire, but they double-shotted the guns of the ironclads, and turned them upon the town, but fortunately no one was injured when they exploded."
The lower half of the city was called Gillmore's town by the inhabitants.
We visited the old office of theMercury, in Broad Street. A messenger sent by the "Swamp Angel" had preceded us, entering the roof, exploding within the chimney, dumping several cart-loads of brickbats and soot into the editorial room, breaking the windows and splintering the doors. It was the room in which Secession had its incubation. The leading rebellious spirits once sat there in their arm-chairs and enthroned King Cotton. They demanded homage to his majesty from all nations. The first shell sent theMercuryup town to a safer locality, but when Sherman began his march into the interior, theMercuryfled into the country to Cheraw, right into his line of advance!
TheCourieroffice in Bay Street had not escaped damage. A shell went down through the floors, ripping up the boards, jarring the plaster from the walls, and exploded in the second story, rattling all the tiles from the roof, bursting out the windows, smashing the composing-stone, opening the whole building to the winds. Another shell had dashed the sidewalk to pieces and blown a passage into the cellar, wide enough to admit a six-horse wagon. Near theCourieroffice were the Union Bank, Farmers' and Exchange Bank, and Charleston Bank, costly buildings, fitted up with marble mantels, floors of terra-cotta tiles, counters elaborate in carved work, and with gorgeous frescoing on the walls. There, five years ago, the merchants of the city, the planters of the country, the slave-traders, assembled on exchange, talked treason, and indulged in extravagant day-dreams of the future glory of Charleston.
The rooms were silent now, the oaken doors splintered, the frescoing washed from the walls by the rains which dripped from the shattered roof; the desks were kindling-wood, the highly-wrought cornice-work had dropped to the ground, the tiles were ploughed up, the marble mantles shivered, the beautiful plate-glass of the windows was in fragments upon the floor. The banks helped on the Rebellion,—contributed their funds to inaugurate it, and invested largely in the State securities to place the State on a war footing. The three banks named held on January 6, 1862, six hundred and ten thousand dollars' worth of the seven per cent State stock, issued under the act of December, 1861.
The entire amount of the State loan of one million eight hundred thousand dollars issued under that act was taken by the banks of the State. Every bank with the exception of the Bank of Camden and the Commercial Bank of Columbia subscribed to the stock. The seven Charleston banks at this early stage of the war had loaned the State permanently eleven hundred and forty-two thousand dollars.[92]
At this period of the war the State had twenty-seven thousand three hundred and sixty-two troops[93]in the field, out of a white population of two hundred and ninety-one thousand, by the census of 1860,—nearly one half of the voting population, so fiercely burned the fires of Secession. But the flames had reached their whitest heat. Even at that time the people had grown weary of the war, and refused to enlist.
"The activity and energy had been already abstracted," writes the chief of the Military Department of the State; "they had stricken at the sovereignty of the State; ignorance, indolence, selfishness, disaffection, and to some extent disappointed ambition, were combined and made unwittingly to aid and abet the enemy, and to become the coadjutors of Lincoln and all the hosts of abolition myrmidons."[94]
Passing from the banks to the hotels, we found a like scene of destruction. The doors of the Mills House were open. The windows had lost their glazing and were boarded up. Sixteen shots had struck the building. The rooms where Secession had been rampant in the beginning, where bottles of wine had been drunk over the fall of Sumter, echoed only to our footsteps. The Charleston Hotel, where Governor Pickens had uttered his proud, exultant, defiant words, was pierced in many places. Dining-halls, parlors, and chambers had been visited by messengers from Wagner. I gathered strawberry flowers and dandelions from the grass-green pavement in front of the hotel, trodden by the drunken multitude on that night when the flag of the Union was humbled in the dust.
No wild, tumultuous shoutings now, but silence deep, painful,sorrowful. Our own voices only echoed along the corridors and balconies where surged the lunatics of that hour. We passed at will along the streets, wanderers in a desolate city. Along the Battery, a beautiful promenade of the city, shaded by magnolias, and fragrant with the bloom of roses and syringas, overlooking the harbor, stood the residences of the "chivalric" men of South Carolina. From their balconies and windows the occupants had watched the first bombardment of Sumter. They had seen with joyful eyes the flames lick up the barracks, and the lowering of the flag of the Union. But now their palatial homes were wrecks, and they were fugitives. Doorless and windowless the houses. The elaborate centre pieces of stucco-work in the drawing-rooms crumbled; the bedrooms filled with bricks, the white marble steps and mahogany balusters shattered; owls and bats might build their nests in the coming spring-time undisturbed in the deserted mansions, the esplanade of the Battery, the pleasure-ground of the Charlestonians, their delight and pride, was now merely a huge embankment of earth,—a magazine of shot and shell.
The churches—where slavery had been preached as a missionary institution, where Secession had been prayed for, whereTe Deumshad been sung over the fall of Sumter and hosannas shouted for the great victory of Manassas—were, like the houses, wrecks. The pavements were strewn with the glass shattered from the windows of old St. Michael's, the pride and reverence of Charleston; and St. Philip's, where worshipped the rich men, where the great apostle of Secession and devotee of slavery, Calhoun, lies in his narrow cell, resembled an ancient ruin. His grave, marked by a white marble slab, was unharmed, but the bones of his fellow-sleepers had been disturbed by the shells. The yard was overrun with weeds and briers. Bombs had torn through the church. Pigeons had free access. Buzzards might roost there undisturbed.
In 1861 the heart of the city was burned out by a great fire, which swept from the Cooper River to the Ashley. How it ignited no one has told. The colored people are fully imbued with the belief that it was sent of the Lord. No attempt had been made to rebuild the waste. All the energy of the people had been given to prosecuting the war. There had been no sound of trowel, hammer, or saw, except upon the ironclads.
The blackened area was overgrown with fire-weeds. Lean and hungry curs barked at us from the tenantless houses. Cats which once purred by pleasant firesides ran from their old haunts at our approach. The rats had deserted the wharves and moved up town with the people. The buzzards, which once picked up the garbage of the markets, had disappeared. A solitary rook cawed to us, perched on the vane of the court-house steeple. Spiders were spinning their webs in the counting-houses.
It was an indescribable scene of desolation,—of roofless houses, cannon-battered walls, crumbling ruins, upheaved pavement, and grass-grown streets; silent to all sounds of business, voiceless only to a few haggard men and women wandering amid the ruins, reflecting upon a jubilant past, a disappointed present, and a hopeless future!
"Her merchants were the great men of the earth; for by their sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints."
Charleston was one of the great slave-marts of the South. She was the boldest advocate for the reopening of the slave-trade. Her statesmen legislated for it; her ministers of the Gospel upheld it as the best means for Christianizing Africa and for the ultimate benefit of the whole human race. Being thus sustained, the slave-traders set up their auction-block in no out-of-the-way place. A score of men opened offices and dealt in the bodies and souls of men. Among them were T. Ryan & Son, M. M. McBride, J. E. Bowers, J. B. Oaks, J. B. Baker, Wilbur & Son, on State and Chalmers Streets. Twenty paces distant from Baker's was a building bearing the sign, "Theological Library, Protestant Episcopal Church." Standing by Baker's door, and looking up Chalmers Street to King Street, I read another sign, "Sunday-School Depository." Also, "Hibernian Hall," the building in which the ordinance of Secession was signed. In another building on the opposite corner was the Registry of Deeds. Near by was the guard-house with its grated windows, its iron bars being an appropriate design of double-edged swords and spears. Thousands of slaves had been incarcerated there for no crime whatever, except for being out after nine o'clock, or for meeting in some secret chamber to tellGod their wrongs, with no white man present. They disobeyed the law by not listening to the bell of old St. Michael's, which at half past eight in the evening, in its high and venerable tower, opened its trembling lips and shouted, "Get you home! Get you home!" Always that; always of command; always of arrogance, superiority, and caste; never of love, good-will, and fellowship. On Sunday morning it said, "Come and sit in your old-fashioned, velvet-cushioned pews, you rich ones! Go up stairs, you niggers!"
The guard-house doors were wide open. The jailer had lost his occupation. The last slave had been immured within its walls, and St. Michael's curfew was to be sweetest music thenceforth and forever. It shall ring the glad chimes of freedom,—freedom to come, to go, or to tarry by the way; freedom from sad partings of wife and husband, father and son, mother and child.
The brokers in flesh and blood took good care to be well buttressed. They set up their market in a reputable quarter, with St. Michael's and the guard-house, the Registry of Deeds and the Sunday-School Depository, the Court-House and the Theological Library around them to make their calling respectable.
But the "Swamp Angel" had splintered the pews of St. Michael's, demolished the pulpit, and made a record of its doings in the Registry building. At one stroke it opened the entire front of the Sunday-School Depository to the light of heaven. There was also a mass of evidence in the courtroom—several cart-loads of brick and plaster, introduced by General Gillmore—against the right of a State to secede.
I entered the Theological Library building through a window from which General Gillmore had removed the sash by a solid shot. A pile of old rubbish lay upon the floor,—sermons, tracts, magazines, books, papers, musty and mouldy, turning into pulp beneath the rain-drops which came down through the shattered roof.
Amid these surroundings was the Slave-Mart,—a building with a large iron gate in front, above which, in large gilt letters, was the word MART.
The outer iron gate opened into a hall about sixty feet longby twenty broad, flanked on one side by a long table running the entire length of the hall, and on the other by benches. At the farther end a door, opening through a brick wall, gave entrance to a yard. The door was locked. I tried my boot-heel, but it would not yield. I called a freedman to my aid. Unitedly we took up a great stone, and gave a blow. Another, and the door of the Bastile went into splinters. Across the yard was a four-story brick building, with grated windows and iron doors,—a prison. The yard was walled by high buildings. He who entered there left all hope behind. A small room adjoining the hall was the place where women were subjected to the lascivious gaze of brutal men. There were the steps, up which thousands of men, women, and children had walked to their places on the table, to be knocked off to the highest bidder. The thought occurred to me that perhaps Governor Andrew, or Wendell Phillips, or William Lloyd Garrison would like to make a speech from those steps. I determined to secure them. While there a colored woman came into the hall to see the two Yankees.
"I was sold there upon that table two years ago," said she.
"You never will be sold again; you are free now and forever!" I replied.
"Thank God! O the blessed Jesus, he has heard my prayer. I am so glad; only I wish I could see my husband. He was sold at the same time into the country, and has gone I don't know where."
Thus spake Dinah More.
In front of the mart was a gilt star. I climbed the post and wrenched it from its spike to secure it as a trophy. A freedman took down the gilt letters for me, and knocked off the great lock from the outer iron gate, and the smaller lock from the inner door. The key of the French Bastile hangs at Mount Vernon; and as relics of the American prison-house then being broken up, I secured these.
Entering the brokers' offices,—prisons rather,—we walked along the grated corridors, looked into the rooms where the slaves had been kept. In the cellar was the dungeon for the refractory,—bolts and staples in the floors, manacles for the hands and feet, chains to make all sure. There had evidentlybeen a sudden evacuation of the premises. Books, letters, bills of sale, were lying on the floor.
Let us take our last look of the Divine missionary institution. Thus writes James H. Whiteside to Z. B. Oakes:—
"I know of five very likely young negroes for sale. They are held at high prices, but I know the owner is compelled to sell next week, and they maybe bought low enough so as to pay. Four of the negroes are young men, about twenty years old, and the other a very likely young woman about twenty-two. I have never stripped them, but they seem to be all right."
C. A. Merrill writes from Franklin:—
"If I can I will come and buy some of your fancy girls and other negroes, if I can get them at a discount."
A. J. McElveen writes from Sumterville:—
"I send a woman, age twenty-two. She leaves two children, and her owner will not let her have them. She will run away. I pay for her in notes, $650. She is a house woman, handy with the needle, in fact she does nothing but sew and knit, and attend to house business."
Another letter from the same:—
"I met a man who offered me four negroes,—one woman and three girls, all likely and fine size for the ages,—thirty-six, thirteen, twelve, and nine. The two oldest girls are the same size; all right as to teeth and person."
I cannot transfer to these pages what follows; decency forbids.
Thomas Otey writes from Richmond:—
"This market is fine. They are selling from twenty-five to fifty per day, and at fine prices. A yellow girl sold this morning for $1,320. No qualifications; black ones at $1,150; men at $1,400. Small ones in the ratio."
There was no longer a manifestation of lordly insolence and assumed superiority over the Yankees on the part of the whites. They spoke respectfully, but were reticent except when questioned. Once they asked questions of Yankees: "What is your occupation? What brought you to the South? What are you doing here? I believe you are a —-- Abolitionist, and the quicker you get out of this town the better." Such was formerly their language. So they talked toJudge Hoar, a citizen of Massachusetts. So they talked to Colonel Woodford in 1860.
In 1860, in the month of December, Lieutenant-Colonel Woodford, of the One Hundred and Twenty-Seventh New York volunteers, was in Charleston on business. He was waited on one day by a committee of citizens and informed that he had better leave the city, inasmuch as he was a Northerner, and besides was suspected of being an Abolitionist. He was put on board a steamer, and compelled to go North. He was now Provost Marshal of the Department. On the morning of the 20th he visited the office of the CharlestonCourier. The editors had fled the city, but the business man of the establishment remained to protect it. Colonel Woodford was received very graciously. The following conversation passed between them:—
Colonel W."Whom have I the pleasure of addressing?"
Business man."Mr. L—--, sir."
Col. W."Will you do me the favor to loan me a piece of paper?"
Mr. L."Certainly, certainly, sir."
Col. W."Shall I also trouble you for a pen and ink?"
Mr. L."With pleasure, sir."
The ink was muddy and the pen poor, but the business man, with great alacrity, obtained another bottle and a better pen. Colonel W. commenced writing again:—
"Office Provost Marshal,Charleston, February 20, 1865."Special Order, No. 1."The Charleston Courier establishment is hereby taken possession of by the United States."
"Office Provost Marshal,Charleston, February 20, 1865.
"Special Order, No. 1.
"The Charleston Courier establishment is hereby taken possession of by the United States."
Mr. L. had been overlooking the writing, forgetful of courtesy in his curiosity. He could hold in no longer.
"Colonel, surely you don't mean to confiscate my property!Why, I opposed nullification in 1830!"
"That may be, sir, but you have done what you could to oppose the United States since 1860. If you will show me by your files that you have uttered one loyal word since January 1, 1865, I will take your case into consideration."
He could not, and theCourierpassed into other hands.
The rich men of the city—those who had begun and sustainedthe Rebellion—fled when they saw that the place was to fall into the hands of the Yankees. But how bitter the humiliation! On the Sunday preceding, Rev. Dr. Porter, of the Church of the Holy Communion, preached upon the duty of fighting the Yankees to the last. "Fight! fight, my friends, till the streets run blood! Perish in the last ditch rather than permit the enemy to obtain possession of your homes!"
But on Monday morning Dr. Porter was hastening to Cheraw, to avoid being caught in Sherman's trap. The people of Charleston expected that Sherman would swing round upon Branchville, and come into the city, and therefore hastened to Columbia, Cheraw, and other northern towns of the interior, where not a few of them became acquainted with the "Bummers."
Rev. Dr. Porter owned a fine residence, which he turned over to an English lady. As there were no hotel accommodations, my friend and I were obliged to find private lodgings, and were directed to the house of the Rev. Doctor. We were courteously received by Mrs. —--, a lady in middle life, still wearing the bloom of old England on her cheeks, although several years a resident of the sunny South. Rising early in the morning, for a stroll through the city before breakfast, I found the cook and chambermaid breaking out in boisterous laughter. The cook danced, clapped her hands, sat down in a chair, and reeled backward and forward in unrestrained ecstasy.
"What pleases you, Aunty?" I asked.
"O massa! I's tickled to tink dat massa Dr. Porter, who said dat no Yankee eber would set his foot in dis yar city, had to cut for his life, and dat a Yankee slept in his bed last night! Bless de Lord for dat!"
The white women manifested their hatred to the bitter end.
"I'll set fire to my house before the Yankees shall have possession of the city!" was the exclamation of one excited lady, when it was whispered that the place was to be evacuated; but her Rebel friends saved her the trouble by applying the torch themselves.
The colored people looked upon the Yankees as their deliverers from bondage. They spoke of their coming as the advent of the Messiah. Passing along King Street, near the citadel,with my fellow-correspondent, we met an old negress with a basket on her arm, a broad-brimmed straw hat on her head, wearing a brown dress and roundabout. She saw that we were Yankees, and made a profound courtesy.
"How do you do, Aunty?"
"O bless de Lord, I's very well, tank you," grasping my hand, and dancing for joy. "I am sixty-nine years old, but I feel as if I wan't but sixteen." She broke into a chant—