A three-story brick building extended the entire length of the gorge (or back wall). In it were quarters for officers, administrative offices, storerooms, powder magazines, and guardhouse. Most of the wooden portions of the building burned during the initial Confederate bombardment in 1861. The small-arms magazine here exploded on December 11, 1863, killing 11 and wounding 41 Confederates. The explosion also tilted the arch over the magazine’s entrance. (The effects of that explosion are still visible today.) [Illustration: Officers’ quarters] Enlisted Men’s Barracks Paralleling the left flank casemates, are the ruins of a three-story enlisted men’s barracks which originally rose slightly above the fort walls. Another enlisted men’s barracks, identical to this one, was on the right flank directly opposite this wall. [Illustration: Enlisted men’s barracks] Garrison Monument The U.S. Government erected this monument in 1932 “in memory of the garrison defending Fort Sumter during the bombardment of April 12-14, 1861.” The tablet contains a roster of the original garrison that served under Major Anderson. [Illustration: Garrison monument] Mountain Howitzer Confederates used several light field pieces, like this 12-pounder mountain howitzer, to defend against a surprise assault by Union infantry troops during the 1863-65 siege. [Illustration: Mountain howitzer] Other Points of Interest Fort Moultrie Three different Fort Moultries have occupied this site. The first, a hastily constructed palmetto-log fort, was built in 1776 to protect Charleston against British attack; the second, a five-sided earth and timber fort, was completed in 1798 as part of the new Nation’s first organized system of coastal defense; and the third, a more formidable masonry structure begun after the second fort was destroyed by a hurricane in 1804, has remained structurally intact and modified only by the replacement of old weapons with new as technology changed. During the Civil War, while the struggle for Charleston Harbor centered on Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie was far from idle and became “a very formidable enemy” to Federal forces. It powerful guns played an important role in the Confederate bombardment of Sumter in 1861. From April 1863 to February 1865, Forts Moultrie and Sumter were the chief defenders of Charleston as repeated Federal land and sea forces hammered at them. “From 1861 to 1865,” one historian has written, “Fort Moultrie found itself engaged in perhaps its strangest period of coastal vigilance: defending the Confederate States of America against the United States of America.”