Capturing Fort Pulaski During the American Civil War

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In late 1860, as North and South stood face to face on the brink of war, Georgia, thanks to the provident leadership of Governor Joseph E. Brown, became one of the first Southern states to begin taking steps to defend itself. First came the reorganization and strengthening of state volunteer forces and the formation of new volunteer companies. The legislature, on Brown’s recommendation, appropriated a million dollars for self-defense and authorized the raising of 10,000 troops. The legislature provided for a convention on January 16, 1861, to decide the future action of Georgia, and the fore’ sighted governor got busy acquiring all the military information and material he could before that time.

Brown figured, correctly, that after then it would be too late. He got U.S. War Department samples of army equipment, with the idea of manufacturing it in Georgia; he got detailed descriptions of the type of rifled cannons and projectiles considered by experts to be superior; and he even placed orders for arms in Northern states. Brown also arranged for a $10,000 bonus to be offered by the state to any person establishing in Georgia a cannon factory capable of making three guns a week and of casting a 10-inch columbiad.

There was great excitement in Georgia when word came that South Carolina had seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. People in Savannah gathered in the streets and cheered; some carried signs favoring secession. After dark on December 26, citizens and companies of militia marched through the streets carrying torchlights and transparencies, and homes and businesses were brilliantly lighted ‘in honor of South Carolina.

Immediately after news of the Federal occupation of Fort Sumter reached Savannah by telegraph on the morning of December 27, angry citizens and military leaders recognized that the same danger threatened the Georgia seaport. The people of Savannah, in a public meeting, determined to seize Fort Pulaski before the Federal government could garrison and defend it. There is but one sentiment on the question,’ reported the Savannah Republican, and that is of indignation and resistance….We might have been quieted by a milder course, but there are none of us so degraded as to submit to being whipped into submission.

Fort Pulaski had been built in the late 1820s and early 1830s on Cockspur Island, which had held a fort of one sort or another since colonial days. Robert E. Lee’s first military assignment after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy was as acting assistant commissary of subsistence at the general site. After many surveys he selected the fort’s permanent site and, because of his superior officer’s illness, actually ran the construction operation for more than a year until being replaced by Lieutenant Joseph K.F. Mansfield, who labored long and hard overcoming such problems as illness–malaria, typhoid, dysentery–a destructive hurricane, and periodic failure of the US. Congress to appropriate necessary funds.

In 1833 the new fort, still not completed, was named Pulaski in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski, the Polish hero mortally wounded at the Battle of Savannah in the American Revolu tion. In 1845 the state of Georgia ceded Cockspur Island to the Federal government. Completed in 1847, huge, handsome Fort Pulaski had in it some 25 million bricks; the majority of those, the rose-brown bricks used to build most of the walls, were manufactured at Hermitage Plantation, two miles from Savannah. The rose-red, much harder bricks used for the openings through which cannon were fired, the arches, and the walls facing the parade grounds were hauled in from Alexandria, Va., and Baltimore, Md.

By December 1860, the Federal government had spent nearly a million dollars on the fort, but only 20 guns out of the planned 146-gun armament had been mounted, and the fort had not been garrisoned–its entire complement was one ordnance sergeant and a caretaker. Until that time, it had served only as a Corps of Engineers training ground. (Singularly, every engineer officer employed during the construction of the fort, except for one who died, became during the course of the war either a Confederate or Union general.)

On the last day of the year, the Savannah Republican received word confirming the general opinion in Savannah that Fort Pulaski was in danger. Joseph Holt, a harsh, outspoken foe of the South, had been appointed secretary of war; he would certainly garrison the fort before long. Colonel Alexander R. Lawton, commander of the 1st Georgia Volunteer Regiment, telegraphed Governor Brown to come to Savannah at once, and the governor arrived the next day. After a short meeting with military men and leading citizens, he ordered state militia to seize the fort.

As there were no Federal troops at the fort, there would be no problem in seizing it. The big difficulty was in rapidly preparing an expedition to occupy it. Arms, ammunition, equipment, commissary supplies and a steamboat for transportation had to be provided. For the seizure and occupation, 50 men each from the Savannah Volunteer Guards and the Oglethorpe Light Infantry and 35 from the Chatham Artillery were chosen. Each man was told to bring a knapsack holding a change of clothing, spoon, knife, fork, cup, clothesbrush, shoebrush, shoe-blacking, comb and brush.

Early on the morning of January 6, 1861, the assembled troops, with Lawton in command, marched in pouring rain through streets banked with cheering people to the West Broad Street wharf, where they boarded the government steamer Ida for the downriver trip to Fort Pulaski.

According to one of the steamboat crew, the small force had more luggage than later was carried by a division. Each soldier had a cot, a trunk and a bedding roll, and every three men had a large mess chest made to hold cooking equipment for a full regiment. The Chatham Artillery brought along two bronze 12-pounder howitzers and four 6-pounder field guns.

About midday the expedition reached Cockspur Island and the troops, with drums beating and colors flying, marched into Fort Pulaski. As soon as Lawton formally took possession of the fort, the flag of Georgia was hoisted over it and saluted. The garrison had orders from Brown to hold the fort against all outsiders and to abandon it only if overpowered by a hostile force. When Georgia seceded on January 19, Fort Pulaski immediately became an important Confederate fortress. The entrance to the Savannah River was safe, Southerners told each other.

But that was hardly true. It took many weeks for the occupying force to get the fort in proper condition for defense. Not a gun in the fort was serviceable until 20 32-pounder naval guns, originally mounted in 1840, were remounted on the ramparts and in the casemates. Some 125 ricefield workers had to be hired to clean out the 7-foot-deep moat, which was filled with mud and overgrown with marsh grass, and daily steamboat service between Savannah and Cockspur had to be established to transport the workers and the food and equipment they required.

The Confederates brought more guns to the fort; erected a telegraph line from Cockspur Island to Savannah; constructed and manned earthworks on Hilton Head Island, S.C., 10 miles from Cockspur, Tybee Island and other islands to the south along the Georgia coast; and supplemented island defenses by a small fleet of old river boats on which they had mounted guns–the so-called Georgia Navy.

By midsummer 1861, the North had completed plans for a naval blockade of the South that included capture of Fort Pulaski. In November, a Union naval expedition forced the Confederates to abandon coastal fortifications, including Hilton Head and Tybee Island, some within sight of Cockspur. Before leaving Tybee, the Confederates were able to ferry the heavy guns from there to Fort Pulaski, and two companies of infantry from the Tybee garrison were added to the force at Pulaski.

Federal troops occupied the abandoned locations and made ready to blockade or attack Fort Pulaski. In early December, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman, who commanded more than 12,500 men in the islands, requisitioned siege guns for the proposed attack and landed a permanent garrison on Tybee.

During this time, it was correctly assumed in Savannah that the real objective of all this Federal action on the coast was the capture and closure of the Georgia seaport–an assumption that brought such panic to Savannah residents that many fled to inland towns and cities. But Southern militarymen–particularly those at Fort Pulaski, including Colonel Charles H. Olmstead, the fort’s commander–were sure the fort could successfully defend itself against both naval attack and land bombardment.

Robert E. Lee, who was then a brigadier general in charge of Confederate forces in South Carolina, Georgia and east Florida, wholeheartedly agreed; the fort’s thick walls could not be breached by cannon, he said. In early November, Lee arrived in Savannah and personally took charge of defense procedures. On two different occasions that month he made detailed inspections of the fort, gave specific instructions about its defense and, forseeing the danger of attack from the rear, ordered big guns to be mounted at certain points on the ramparts.

The Federal expedition to capture the coastal islands was a joint Army-Navy operation, with the naval squadron and convoy under the command of Captain Samuel F. Du Pont. In late December 1861, Du Pont, in an effort to strangle the commerce of Savannah, sank stone-loaded vessels across channels of the Savannah River and stationed gunboats in Warsaw and Ossabaw sounds, cutting off all possible avenues of back-door entrance to the port.

About this same time, Sherman decided it would be a good idea to make a direct attack on the city of Savannah by traveling through the winding waterways that led into the Savannah River above Fort Pulaski, thus bypassing the fort. Since this plan required naval transportation, protection and assistance, Sherman, in his usual abrasive manner, insisted that Du Pont agree to it.

Du Pont, after a reconnaissance of those winding waterways, felt Sherman’s scheme to be impractical and dangerous. The difference of opinion between the two commanders became so inflamed that it finally resulted in Sherman’s removal from the campaign. But long before he departed in March 1862, he gave the orders that established a tight loop of batteries and gunboats around Fort Pulaski.

The steamboat Ida, employed as the supply ship for Fort Pulaski, made her last run down from Savannah on February 13, 1862. On that run, she was fired on nine times by heavy guns the Federals had secretly set up on the north bank of the river. Hit but not sunk, she raced on full steam as shots splashed around her, and reached the fort, but did not attempt a return trip up the Savannah River.

On February 15, the Federals completed another battery on the south bank of the river, and also sealed off the main creek waterway connecting the river with the coast. They also destroyed the telegraph line connecting Cockspur Island with Savannah. Fort Pulaski was thus cut off from all assistance; supplies and reinforcements could not reach the fort, nor could its garrison escape to the mainland.

When Fort Pulaski was cut off, the garrison was formed of five companies with a total of 385 officers and men–one company of the Oglethorpe Light Infantry, three companies of Georgia Volunteers and one company of Georgia Regulars, all under Olmstead’s command. The fort had 48 guns, placed to command all approaches. On January 28 it had been provisioned with six months’ food supply.

Federal military leaders could not agree whether to take Fort Pulaski by force or simply wait and starve the garrison into surrender. Finally they were influenced by the Northern press’s clamor for action and by the insistence of military strategists that a quick capture of Savannah was vital. Before the end of February the commanding general of the army ordered that all efforts of the entire coastal expeditionary force be devoted to the reduction of Fort Pulaski.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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