[Quick set-up: It’s shortly after Lincoln’s election in the north, and South Carolina, which would be the first state to secede from the union, is already talking about doing just that. However, there are a series of forts near Charleston that are stocked with Federal troops. This is a problem, as everyone knows that the state is likely going to secede soon, but the state REQUIRES that those forts be handed over to them, and this is one of the major tension-building moments that spark off the Civil War. There was this weird twilight period before the actual secession, where militia, state leaders, and famous secessionists are walking around the forts and touring their defenses – doing nothing illegal, but everyone, including the garrison, know exactly what’s going on.]
The fort, he [a renowned secessionist] said, sat on a narrow strip of land and was bordered on both sides by civilian properties. South Carolina could erect an earthwork several hundred yards away, hiding it beyond some cottages, and place there a battery of guns that could prevent ships from bringing Moultrie more provisions, thereby starving out the garrison. He told his idea to three members of the state legislature’s Military Committee, and they thought it interesting but unnecessary. If they ever wished to grab Moultrie, they told him, the fort could “easily be taken by the militia.”
She was indeed pathetically vulnerable to attack by men on foot.
Winds had pushed the island’s sands so high against its walls that grazing cows could walk up the gentle sand slopes and stumble through her embrasures, ending up within the fort’s parapet. Even if Moultrie’s garrison found some way to evade disoriented cattle, they still needed to correct the fort’s basic vulnerability. On its west side, cottages huddled nearby as if to use it to protect themselves from Atlantic gales. On its eastern side were a few more houses, plus, more ominously, tall sand dunes that rose higher than the fort’s walls. On its harbor side the fort was relatively formidable, if someone removed the slope of sand leaning against its wall, but the north side was terribly weak.
Sullivan’s Island’s only road meandered past the fort a few feet from its unguarded main gate.
Source:
Detzer, David. “Salad Days.” Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, 2002. 30. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
ER, I, 490.
Truman Seymour, “Forts Moultrie and Sumter: 1860, 1861,” The History of the First Regiment of Artillery, 1879, p. 470.
Further Reading:
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