Fort Pulaski, GA

Fort Pulaski was built on the Savannah River on Tybee Island in 1847. It was built of stone and brick with walls many feet thick and in times before the development of rifled canon would have been nearly impregnable. The Union army won this important defense point of shipping on the Savannah River in April 1862. This was two years before Sherman took Atlanta and marched to Savannah.

The battle was the first use by any army of rifled canon which had only recently been developed. It is interesting to look out from the top of the walls of the fort towards where the Union artillery batteries were in place 1600 to 3400 yards away. It is a long way off.

Gallery here.

We had thought we would drive the 120 miles north to Fort Sumter near Charleston, SC but due to being a week behind in our schedule, that it takes a boat ride to actually get to the fort and Bentley wouldn’t be able to go, and because of an interesting fact we decided to forgo the trip.

The interesting fact is that although Fort Sumter is famous as the first battle of the Civil War it was a bloodless battle. After 34 hours of artillery fire on the fort no one had been killed and little damage had been done to the structure. The problem for the Federalists, as the Union is called in these parts, was that they were out of supplies, especially food. Lincoln had instructed the commander to hold out until he ran out of food. The battle prevented the off loading of supplies and the Union surrendered.

The battle was bloodless that is until the Union army fired off an artillery salute to the stars and stripes preliminary to surrendering and in the process killed one soldier and wounded four others.

Seems kind of anticlimactic.