We steamed into Charleston Harbor early in the morning; and one by one, Sumter, Moultrie, Pinkney, and at last the City of Desolation itself rose from the smooth expanse of water, as the masts of ships rise from the ocean when you approach them. Where, four years ago, before the fatal attack on this now shapeless heap of sand and mortar, the flags of all nations fluttered, and the wharves were crowded with a commerce that successfully rivaled Savannah, Mobile and every other Southern city save New Orleans, and even aspired to compete with New York in the Southern markets, only transports and Quartermasters’ vessels were now to be seen, with here and there a passenger steamer, plying to and from New York for the accommodation of Yankee officers and their wives! The harbor itself was dotted with insignificant-looking iron clads, mingled with an occasional old ship of the line, and, in ampler supply, the modern “Yankee gunboats,” of the double-ender type, which formed so potent a cause for alarm in the councils of the privates in the Rebel armies.

The elegant residences along the battery front retained the aristocratic seclusion of their embowering shrubbery, creepers and flowering plants; but even through these gracious concealments which Nature cast over them, the scars from the Swamp Angel could everywhere be seen. Pavements had been torn up from the principal business streets, to build the batteries that lined the shore; and great embankments, crowned with Tredegar guns, shut out the prospect from many an aristocratic window. The unfinished Custom House was among the most conspicuous buildings, the white marble blocks lying scattered about it, as they were left by the workmen four years ago. “We’ll never finish it,” the fervid revolutionists said, as they began the war. “We’ve paid Yankee tariffs long enough; now, hurrah for free trade with our friends of France and Great Britain!” But the Custom House stands, and next winter Mr. Fessenden will be reporting to the Senate an item in the military appropriation bill for its completion.

Admiral Dahlgren and Fleet Captain Bradford came alongside in the Admiral’s gig, soon after our arrival; and while our boatswain was piping his whistle as the Admiral came over the ship’s side, the guns of the “Pawnee” began a salute for the Chief Justice. The Treasury Agent and some other officials soon followed, and the Admiral took the party under his charge, transferred us to a comfortable and speedy little harbor steamer, and started toward that first goal of every man’s curiosity—Sumter.

The rebellion has left its marks on the pale, thoughtful features of the Admiral, not less than upon the harbor he has been assailing. The terrible death of noble young Ulric Dahlgren, a martyr to the barbarism of slavery, might well grave deep traces on a father’s face; but the climate here, and the labors of the past have also been very trying, and one can readily believe, what used to be rather sarcastically urged by the Admiral’s enemies, that his health did not permit him to keep up in gunnery with General Gillmore.

We passed a little sailing vessel manned by blacks. The Admiral told us that they had brought it down one of the rivers, the other day, and he had allowed them to keep it. They earn a livelihood bringing wood to the city. Recently there have been a number of outrages perpetrated on the blacks inland, by their late masters and some of the returning Rebel soldiers. Greatly infuriated, the blacks came to him begging for arms. “I have never before doubted their orderly disposition,” he said, “and I am not sure that anybody would remain orderly under those circumstances.”

The Charleston city negroes were represented as unexpectedly intelligent. “Out of two hundred and seventy-four laborers at work on the streets,” said one of the city officials who had joined us, “one hundred and seventy-four are negroes—the rest whites. Of the negroes, over a hundred (or over four-sevenths) can read, while scarcely one-seventh of the whites have made the same advancement!”^[11] Captain Bradford gave a significant illustration of the progress of some ideas among the less intelligent negroes of the country. They had again and again asked him, he said, what good it did them to make them free, unless they were to own the land on which they had been working, and which they had made productive and valuable. “Gib us our own land and we take care ourselves; but widout land, de ole massas can hire us or starve us, as dey please.”

A huge mass of iron was pointed out as we passed, not unlike the plates of the famous “Merrimac,” or like the gunboat “Benton,” on the Mississippi. It was one of the Rebel iron clads, sunk just before the evacuation of the city. They had injured it very little, and our authorities are confident of making it one of the best iron clads in the service. Enforced self-reliance, had, indeed, gone far toward making the South a nation; for here were fine engines, worthy of our most extensive Northern shops, which had been manufactured in Georgia within a year. Before the war, such an undertaking as making engines for a great steamer, in the South, was scarcely dreamed of. Near the iron clad lay some of the cigar-shaped torpedo boats—an invention never very successful, and now, let us hope, with its occupation, wholly gone.

The obstructions in the harbor, which so long kept the iron clads under Dupont and Dahlgren at bay, still stretched in a long line, unbroken in parts, across from Sumter toward the land on either side. Plenty of torpedoes were supposed to be still in the harbor—Captain Bradford himself had been blown up not long ago by one of them, to the serious discomposure of his personal effects, in cabin and state-room, but without actual physical injury.

But for two things, a stranger might have supposed Sumter a mere pile of mortar, stones and sand, which only culpable lack of enterprise left to block up the harbor. From the center of the rubbish rose a flagstaff, with the stars and stripes floating at the top; and near the water’s edge, uninjured casements still stood among the debris, with black muzzles peeping out, as from the lower deck of an old ship of the line. Closer inspection showed, also, some little howitzers and other light pieces, placed on what was once the parapet.

The sun fairly parboiled us, and, coming into this tropical heat so suddenly—for the night before, on the deck of the “Wayanda,” at sea, we were wearing overcoats—it was so oppressive as to produce a sickening faintness on some of the party; but we patiently followed everywhere, clambered over the shapeless sea wall, inspected the sand gabions, worked our way into the snugly-protected little out-looks for the sharpshooters, ran down the inside of what had been the walls, and dived into the subterranean regions where the casemate guns stood all the time of the bombardment, uninjured, but not deigning to waste their ammunition in useless replies. The contracted but comparatively comfortable quarters here remain almost as the Rebels left them. A long, damp hall, with a few cots still standing in it, was the place for the garrison, where they slept in comparative indifference to the explosion of shells overhead; a rather more airy hall still contained the old, split-bottom arm-chairs, which the officers had collected; on another side were the hospitals, and—ghastly sight—there, on a shelf, were half a dozen coffins, which had been all ready for the reception of the next victims to Gillmore’s shells!

Fresh from Fort Fisher, which had been stormed, it was natural that one should look on Fort Sumter with surprise, when told that it could not be stormed. The officers say the garrison would have retreated to the casemates, from whence they could have made the occupation of the interior area of the fort impossible; but surely the men who swarmed over that northern end of Fort Fisher, and fought through the whole afternoon and far into the night, from traverse to traverse, down to the Mound battery, would have needed little time to establish themselves here. They say, too, that the fire from the Rebel works on Morris Island would have rendered Sumter untenable, but that fire could not have been more powerful than ours had been from James Island. Yet the Rebels did not find Sumter untenable on account of our fire. Whether an assault upon Sumter—necessarily bloody beyond precedent—could have been justified by the maxims of war, is a question; but that such men as took Fort Fisher could have taken Fort Sumter, if aided by a proper naval force, seems to me clear.

It is said that the Rebels had a similar idea—long in fact before Fort Fisher had been attacked. It was one of the strange personal complications of this war, that the regular Rebel officer who had command of Sumter when our terrific bombardment began, had no faith in its defensibility, and had been replaced by a young nephew of the very Dominie of our party, who has been walking with us over the ruins. The Doctor is as glad as any of us that the fort is reduced, but his eye kindled as Admiral Dahlgren gave the tribute of honest admiration to the splendid bravery and tenacity of his Rebel nephew.

From Sumter we steamed off to Sullivan’s Island, and in a few moments were clambering among the mazes of the Rebel works. Here, four years ago, the first fortifications of the war were thrown up. Here the dashing young cavaliers, the haughty Southrons who scorned the Yankee scum and were determined to have a country and a history for themselves, rushed madly into the war as into a picnic. Here the boats from Charleston landed every day cases of champagne, pâtés innumerable, casks of claret, thousands of Havana cigars, for the use of the luxurious young Captains and Lieutenants, and their friends among the privates. Here were the first camps of the war, inscribed, as the newspapers of those days tell us, with such names of companies as “The Live Tigers,” “The Palmetto Guards,” “The Marion Scorpions,” “The Yankee Smashers.” Here, with feasting, and dancing, and love making, with music improvised from the ball room, and enthusiasm fed to madness by well-ripened old Madeira, the free-handed, free-mannered young men who had ruled “society” at Newport and Saratoga, and whose advent North had always been waited for as the opening of the season, dashed into revolution as they would into a waltz. Not one of them doubted that, only a few months later, he should make his accustomed visit to the Northern watering places, and be received with the distinction due a hero of Southern independence. Long before these fortifications, thus begun, were abandoned, they saw their enterprise in far different lights, and conducted it in a far soberer and less luxurious way.

The works stretched along the sandy shore of Sullivan’s Island almost as far as the eye can reach. They consist of huge embankments of sand, revetted with palmetto logs, and were evidently planned throughout by a skillful engineer. Coupling these with the works on the other side of the harbor, and with Sumter, one readily believes them to constitute the strongest system of harbor defenses on the coast. Strolling around one of the works, we came upon a little slab, near a palmetto tree, under the shade of the embankment, “To Osceola, Patriot and Warrior.” It is the grave of one of the last of the Florida chieftains, who died here in confinement, and for whom some white enemy, but admirer, had done these last tender honors. Shall the latest warriors of this island ever find similar admirers?

After our fatiguing trip, the Admiral spread out, on our return to the flag-ship, a lunch of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, and other tropical fruits, brought over from Havana. At the end of his table hung the only Union flag, or trace of anything resembling it, which the naval officers have been able to find anywhere in South Carolina or Georgia—a long, narrow strip of coarse bunting, containing two stripes, red and white, and a few stars in a ground of blue—taken from a deserted cabin near Savannah.

New York papers, only five days old, had just arrived. In the midst of the wonders which the war had wrought here, it was scarcely surprising to see even the New York Herald out vigorously for negro suffrage!