03/08/2022
In their own words, they bombarded civilians “with pleasure”, schemed to wreak as much destruction in residential areas as possible, and terrified women and children who were forced to evacuate their homes. No, these were’t the Russians in Ukraine, these were American soldiers in Charleston, Federal troops using huge siege guns against the entire city population relentlessly for nearly two years during the Civil War.
Union troops attacking this Confederate city were given free reign to rain down upon its citizens explosive and incendiary shells by Lincoln’s Chief of Staff Henry Halleck, and beginning in the Summer of 1863, when northern troops got a foot hold on Morris Island, Charleston was targeted again and again.
Most people are familiar with the “Swamp Angel”, a gun that fired from a platform in the Morris Island marsh that the clueless Yankees called a swamp without any angelic intent. But that was only a small part of the bombardment, which is well-documented in the official records of the war, volumes 35 and 38. New England generals Rufus Saxton and John G. Foster were in command when the Union troops began the barrage, Foster writing that “we will fire incendiary shells on Charleston with pleasure.”
Taking aim intentionally at civilian areas, guns on Morris Island unleashed a steady stream of fire, with Foster boasting “I am confident that the city can be destroyed entirely by the fire of a large number of 100 and 200 pounder Parrott rifles.” The Parrott rifled cannon was a brand new weapon at the time, capable of firing shells nearly five miles, and after pounding the lower Charleston peninsula where the fire of 1861 had scarred the city, people began evacuating to upper wards.
Foster was aware of the evacuations, and intentionally changed aim to hit the upper wards, cruelly writing, “our shells fire with such accuracy that people who had formerly moved there for safety are now moving back to the burnt district.”
One of those people was 13 year-old Rose Pringle Ravenel, who wrote in her diary “we walked back to the house on East Battery, stopping again and again to listen for the shells..there were very few people about and everywhere we saw the work of shells that had been hurled into the city.”
Because doubters will point out that much of the old city still stands, it should be pointed out that a 30-pound Parrott shell won’t knock down a building, but can certainly injure and terrify the people inside, and it’s worth noting that few houses show damage from the 7.3 Richter Scale 1886 earthquake that caused walls to collapse all over the city.
The truth is, the bombardment did destroy buildings, did cause fires, did kill civilians (including black slaves), and did bring terror to the innocent. One 30-pound Parrott began firing on Charleston in December, 1863, and launched 4606 shells into the city in 69 days before it exploded.
“No military results of great value were ever expected from this firing,” Saxton wrote, adding that by January, 1864 100 shells a day were falling on the city, saying “the shells fall more than two blocks above Calhoun Street, into the most populated portion of the city.”
“I keep up a regular fire upon Charleston,” Saxton wrote in September 1864,”within the last week fire has been more destructive than ever before to the city. The 200-pounder is by far the most effective gun ever brought to bear, it is very destructive as nearly the entire city can be covered by its fire.”
This evidence clears up for good any doubt as to the war motives of the Federals who attacked Charleston. They were not blasting innocent Charlestonians black and white to preserve the Union or end slavery, they were here for a ruthless conquest of the South, but you won’t see any of this taught in schools or find it in the pages of the local newspaper. By the way, I'm posting here because Facebook has banned my right of free speech on my page over purely ideological differences.
