In preparing against potential attacks on Fort Sumter, the garrison had assembled some traps that were so unusual, local South Carolinians would sail past and gawk at them!

>[Seymour](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/TSeymour.jpg) also designed three large explosive devices, made from barrels stuffed with stones and gunpowder. One day, when testing one over the side, it exploded in a huge *bang*, throwing missiles in all directions. Passengers aboard a nearby ship reported this contraption, and the local papers spoke ominously of “infernal machines.” >One of [Foster](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/John_G._Foster_-_Brady-Handy.jpg)’s German carpenters, a man named Witzmann, built a *cheval-de-frise* outside the walls. These wooden thingamajigs, like logs with long, pointy sticks through them, had been used in Europe to slow down cavalry attacks. Witzmann stared at a rough sketch, then went off and hammered together a peculiar structure like nothing else in the world, and placed it outside the walls. Baffled South Carolinians drifted past on boats to examine it with their spyglasses, trying to decipher what it might be. ____________________________ **Author’s Note:** >For details about their activities, see, for example: OR, I, passim; GEN; REM; James Chester, “Inside Sumter in ’61,” BAL, I. ____________________________ **Source:** Detzer, David. “Hostages.” *Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War*. New York: Harcourt, 2002. 182-83. Print. ____________________________ **Further Reading:** [Truman Seymour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Seymour) [John Gray Foster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Foster)