Quaint and Historic Forts of North AmericaHammond, John Martin
History
Quaint and Historic Forts of North America
Hammond, John Martin
Fortification -- North America; Fortification -- United States; Historic buildings -- United States
During all this time Fort Sumter had been supplied with provisions
and necessaries by the citizens of Charleston.
When Major Anderson in command at Fort Sumter accepted Beauregard’s
terms of surrender and saluted the new flag, he was conveyed, with
all the honors of war, in the steamer _Isabel_ to the United States
fleet which had lain idle in the offing.
From this time until the end of the Civil War Charleston was in a
state of siege. There was a short period of preparation on both
sides before the Federal fleet appeared, November, 1861, outside
the quaint old city. The city maintained its integrity complete
against attacks by water, and finally fell to a move in force by
land in the last year of the war, when the defenders of Charleston
were withdrawn and all of the men of the remnants of the armies of
the Confederacy were being concentrated for one last desperate
protest against the inevitable.
After the Civil War Fort Sumter was repaired and strengthened and
is still a seat of military power as a sub-post of Fort Moultrie.
To reach Fort Moultrie one goes from Charleston by ferry to the
northern side of the Cooper River and takes a trolley which leads
seaward along the coast across an inlet to Sullivan’s Island, which
has become a popular summer place with many people of Charleston.
Fort Moultrie, when once it is reached, is not a pretentious
place,--the old works, that is,--being simply a star-shaped fort
of brownish-red brick on which the hot southern sun pours down in
quantity. It overlooks a rumpled beach and the sea on one side and
flat uninteresting land on the other. To the seaward one can gaze
upon Fort Sumter and find it not more interesting of aspect close
at hand than it is at a distance. Beside the gate of Fort Moultrie
is a small marble shaft which marks the grave of Osceola, the
Seminole chieftain. If one has devoured Indian tales in his youth
he will no doubt be more interested in this simple memorial than
in the immediate aspect of military things around him. It was in
Fort Moultrie that Osceola was jailed after his capture in Florida
and it was here that he died,--from a broken heart, if one is still
interested in Indian stories!
The present Fort Moultrie was started in 1841 on the site of a
famous old palmetto structure of the same name which had stood
since early Revolutionary days. In 1903, with the exquisite tact
which it displays occasionally, army headquarters in Washington
decided to change the name of the fort to Fort Getty in honor of
some deserving soldier whose career is recorded in the files of the
Army Department, but the loud chorus of indignation that greeted
this move carried all the way from Charleston to Washington, and
the name of that delightful old Revolutionary character, William H.
Moultrie, is still preserved at the spot where his first battle was
fought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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