The Ironclad Assault on Charleston Part II (April 7, 1863)

 

With Du Pont's attack force of 9 ironclad warships steaming towards the harbor, both sides were ready for the possibility of their success. Confederate war ships were waiting further back in the harbor. The most formidable were the Chicora and Palmetto State, both ironclads. For their part the Union had wooden ships waiting to join once the ironclads had done their part. Neither of these groups would act unless the ironclads made it past Fort Sumter.[1]

Storm in the Harbor

The Confederates knew the ironclads were coming, and they worked on ensuring that their batteries and works were ready for battle. At 2 PM the enemy fleet began to advance up the channel, and the South Carolinians waited expectantly for them to get into range. General Roswell S. Ripley, commanding the defense, had personally gone to Fort Sumter as it was sure to be the epicenter of the battle.[2] Frank Vizetelly, a British journalist, waited like the Confederate defenders, and reported on the appearance of the oncoming ironclads:

There they came, their turrets whirling in a waltz of death. Cautiously they worked their way up the ship channel, and, as I watched their approach through my glass, I could hear the thumping of my heart against my ribs…Every house is pouring out its inmates, eager to witness the engagement: ladies, in almost gala costume, are hastening to the battery promenade, from whence an unobstructed view of the harbor and forts, and of the enemy’s fleet, can be obtained. There is no terror expressed in any of these countenances – all are calm and collected; they are going to witness the bravery of their defenders.[3]

Frank Vizetelly was a traveling British journalist. At the start of the American Civil War he attended the Union Army, but then went South to report from the Confederate side. He grew so like the Confederates so much that he began to label the conflict the more secession-friendly "War Between the States." (https://emergingcivilwar.com/2012/04/04/drawing-the-war-part-3-frank-vizetelly/)

In Fort Sumter, as the defenders assembled for action and the flags were raised, the band struck up “Dixie,” though there’s no record that the Union seamen could hear it. However, they must have heard the 13-gun salute, either a humorous attempt to treat the battle like a gala occasion or a chivalric salute to the enemy.[4]

The Ironclad Assault on Charleston Part I (Leading up to April 7, 1863)

Charleston, South Carolina was the birthplace of the Confederacy. It was there that delegates from across the state successfully voted to secede on December 24, 1860. Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard found himself overseeing the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. This initiated the Civil War and gave the Northern states more reason to despise the city. Beauregard would go on to command at Bull Run and in Western Tennessee, but in September 1862 would return to the city that made him a nationwide name.

Beauregard’s engineering expertise arrived just in time. Surprisingly the Union Navy had made no firm attempt to take the rebellious city, instead seizing other ports. But as 1862 progressed it finally began to tighten its grip, and the Army mounted a failed expedition in July. Still absent was a major naval assault. It would finally come on April 7, 1863. Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, a lifelong sea man who had joined the Navy at age 12 in 1815, would try to force Charleston Harbor with the latest in naval machines, the Jon Ericsson-designed ironclad monitors. Du Pont would pay the price for the hubris and unrealistic expectations of his political superiors.

Mini-Series Review: Death by Lightning (2025)

 

As far as the general public is concerned, one of the most least known parts of American history is what occurred in the eastern part of the nation between the Civil War and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. This is ironic, because the most filmed part of American history is probably the Old West of the same period. So imagine my pleasant surprise when, just a week before its release, I learned there was a four-part Netflix series on President James Garfield and his assassin Charles Guiteau!

James Garfield is one of the most fascinating and over-looked figures in American political history. Born into a poor Ohioan family and raised for most of his childhood and youth by a single mother, He became a voracious reader and was noted for his vast knowledge as an adult. Initially a teacher, he entered politics as a Republican and an Abolitionist. In the Civil War Garfield joined the Union Army and, with quite a bit of good fortune, rose to the rank of brigadier-general before leaving the army to become a US Representative as well as a lawyer. In 1880 he went to the Republican Convention in New York to support John Sherman as presidential candidate, but surprisingly found himself nominated after he gave a rousing speech defending certain delegates from expulsion (the speech is one of the more historically altered moments in the show).