from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

REMINISCENCES OF FORT SUMTER.

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BY HORATIO L. WAIT.

[Read December 1, 1880.]

N the 12th day of April, 1861, Edmund Ruffin, a civilian from Richmond, Va., fired the first hostile shot of the Great Rebellion, at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor; and the telegraphic reports of the fact, instantly flashed over the length and breadth of the land, kindled into a blaze the dormant fires of what had already been characterized as the "impending conflict."

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Up to this time Fort Sumter had been but little known. outside of army circles and travellers on the Charleston steamers, but it was destined soon to become as famous as any fortification that was ever erected. It stands at the entrance of Charleston Harbor, on the edge of the shoal forming the southern line of the main ship channel, and is built on an artificial foundation of rock, sunk there for that purpose. It was planned and erected before the invention of heavy ordnance, and was not calculated to resist anything heavier than the old-fashioned projectiles, being built of brick with stone trimmings. It was pentagonal structure, having the gorge or rear wall toward the shoals and points of the nearest land; and curiously enough this, its weakest side, was the one called upon to bear the brunt of four years of intermittent assaults, as its constructors were chiefly intent upon preparations for an attack from the outer sides. The faces of the fort were about fifty feet high from the water, and the casemated walls were over thirty feet thick from face to rear. It was designed to mount two tiers of guns in casemates, and one tier en barbette. At the outbreak of the war the fort was still unfinished. Work upon it had

been suspended; no guns were mounted, and its only garrison was an old ordnance sergeant and his family. To show how neglected it was, notwithstanding its commanding position at the entrance of the bay, and its being in fact the key to the harbor of Charleston, the following incident may be related. A short time before the war the sergeant in charge was stricken down with yellow fever. His devoted wife, after vainly trying for two days to attract attention to the fort by the use of the flag and other signals in the intervals of her necessary attention to her husband, at last resorted to the desperate expedient of setting her two little children adrift in a boat with the flood tide, the oldest bearing a letter in its hand stating the critical nature of the case, and asking for immediate assistance. The boat with the children drifted ashore near the city, and assistance was sent; but it came too late to save the life of the sergeant.

It is impracticable on this occasion to go into the details of the curious social complications which surrounded the small United States force stationed in Charleston Harbor at the outbreak of the Rebellion, or to describe the ingenious and desperate expedients to which they had to resort in order to maintain themselves in the very jaws of the rampant lion of secession. These, as in the similar predicaments of Slemmer at Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor, form a very curious and romantic part of the early history of the Rebellion.

When Major Robert Anderson, the commandant of the post, found it imprudent to remain longer at the old station at Fort Moultrie, he with great secrecy, during the night of December 26, 1860, transferred his entire command, and such stores as could then be transported, to Fort Sumter; and on the next day at noon he formally hoisted his garrison flag with religious ceremonies. The Confederates were greatly enraged when they discovered that Major Anderson had thus slipped through their fingers, for they had considered his little command as

their easy prey; and they at once began the writing of indignant epistolary remonstrances, offers of negotiations, and the erection of batteries on all the points of land surrounding and commanding Fort Sumter. They also constructed a fortification, called Fort Ripley, in the centre of the harbor, on the middle ground at the edge of the main ship channel, which was built on an artificial foundation something after the plan of Fort Sumter. The letter-writing, negotiating, and battery-building continued until the Confederates had completed all their preparations, and had erected nineteen batteries commanding Fort Sumter. One of the officers in charge of a part of the Confederate works, presuming on the forbearance of Major Anderson, actually had the assurance to ask if Anderson would interpose any objections to his mooring the Confederate floating battery within a hundred yards of the gorge wall of Fort Sumter. This floating battery was an experimental structure of heavy timber, mounting siege-guns, protected by a shield or sloping roof of timber plated with iron.

The firm and decided position of Anderson and the officers of his little garrison during these trying times is the more remarkable because they were all, with one exception, personally opposed to the election of Mr. Lincoln. Anderson had been a slaveholder, and his social relations were mostly with the slaveholding class. They were constantly importuned to accept commissions from the Confederate powers, by officers who had been trained in the old United States army and navy, and who had then taken up arms in the Confederate cause; and every possible influence was thrown around them to try and win them from their allegiance to the Federal Government. They had seen the United States revenue cutter that was stationed in Charleston Harbor turned over to the secession leaders by her commander; and she was at that very time anchored near the landing of the fort, as the Confederate States' guard-ship.

During the delay caused by the attempts at negotiation and the letter-writing of the Confederates, Anderson's command had been exerting themselves to the utmost to mount as many of the guns as possible. The fort was designed to mount one hundred and thirty-five heavy guns; but Anderson, with his limited resources, was only able to put in position fifty-two of the lighter ones. In order to complete the defences of the fort so that it might be held against an assault, they bricked up all of the embrasures where they were unable to mount guns, built a wall of masonry behind the sally port, and constructed galleries projecting over the parapets to command the several faces with a flanking musketry fire. They made as many cartridges as they could get materials to make the cartridge cylinders for, using even clothing and bedding for that purpose.

At this time the garrison consisted of nine officers, fifty-five men, fifteen musicians, and a civilian force of thirty masons and laborers, making one hundred and nine men, of whom but sixty-three were combatants. The Confederate force surrounding them was three thousand in the nineteen batteries and five thousand in reserve. The small garrison of Sumter was so inadequate for so large a fort that the men were soon worn out with the overwork of these necessary preparations and the vigilant watching made imperative by their precarious condition. They were without any proper supply of fuel, and had to split up gun-carriages and catch floating timber drifting past the fort to do their cooking with. Their supply of provisions, which consisted at first of pork, beans, and hard-tack, was finally reduced to pork alone; and on the morning when the bombardment began, their only articles of subsistence were pork and water. This low diet, and the necessity of living in the damp quarters without fires during the winter weather, proved a very trying ordeal to most of them, and some never recovered from the effects of it.