Capturing Fort Pulaski During the American Civil War

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Captain Quincy A. Gillmore, Sherman’s chief engineer, was sent to take command of all troops on Tybee Island and begin preparation for the bombardment of Fort Pulaski. Gillmore, a bluff, handsome man considered one of the most brilliant members of the US. Corps of Engineers, was described by Whitelaw Reid, a prominent Northern newspaper correspondent, as a quick-speaking, solid six-footer with big head, broad, good-humored face, and curly brown hair and beard. He was an innovative soldier who dared to disregard tradition.

The Confederates inside Fort Pulaski were far more concerned about losing their supply sources than about any danger that the fort’s 7 I/2-foot-thick, solid brick walls, backed with massive masonry piers, could be pierced by the nearest Federal big guns, which were located miles away on the only firm ground on Tybee Island. Wasn’t it a fact, established by extensive military experience, that smoothbore guns and mortars could not penetrate heavy masonry walls from farther than 700 yards away? The U.S. Army Chief of Engineers, General Joseph G. Totten, had told officers: You might as well bombard the Rocky Mountains as Fort Pulaski….The fort could not be reduced in a month’s firing with any number of guns of manageable caliber. And they reminded each other again that General Lee, while standing on the fort’s parapet, had pointed to Tybee Island and said confidently, They will make it pretty warm for you here with shells, but they cannot breach your walls at that distance.

Gillmore believed he could reduce Fort Pulaski with gunfire from Tybee, convinced his superiors it was worth trying, and got his command busy constructing gun emplacements, unloading guns through the surf and dragging them across marsh and sand to the emplacements. Roads had to be constructed, as did storehouses and bombproof shelters. Materials, supplies and ammunition had to be unloaded from ships and carted to the storehouses, and gun crews had to be trained. It was an enormous, difficult job. Some of the guns, loaded on sling carts, made such heavy loads that it required 250 men harnessed to a cart to pull them.

Gillmore’s men erected 11 batteries for guns and armament on the shore of Tybee facing Fort Pulaski; the total armament on the island included 36 pieces. Seven of the major batteries were established on open marshland in plain view of the fort and in range of its guns. All work on them was done at night by men who were not allowed to speak above a whisper and whose movements were directed by the sound of a whistle. Each morning before dawn, the night’s work was hidden by camouflage.

While this was going on, the Confederates on Cockspur were completing changes instructed by Lee. They tore down the veranda at the front of the officers’ quarters and replaced it with a covered passage made of timber and earth. They stacked sandbags between the guns on the ramparts and, for the protection of the gunners, dug holes–rat holes–in the terreplein. They cut the entire parade ground into wide traps to prevent shot and shell from rolling.

Preparations on Tybee for the bombardment of Fort Pulaski were completed by the end of March. Command of the Department of the South previously held by Thomas Sherman had been given to Maj. Gen. David Hunter, which promoted far greater harmony between Army and Navy as plans for the action against Pulaski were finalized. Gillmore, still in charge of the bombardment, on April 9 notified his superiors that everything was in readiness. General orders were issued; the battle was to begin the next morning.

Shortly after sunrise on April 10, an officer on duty on the ramparts of Fort Pulaski reported that suspicious changes had occurred during the night on Tybee. While Olmstead and other officers watched, a small boat bearing a flag of truce set out from Tybee. It landed at Cockspur Island’s south wharf, bearing Union Lieutenant James H. Wilson with a summons for Fort Pulaski to surrender.

Olmstead sent back his reply: Sir, I acknowledge receipt of your communication demanding the unconditional surrender of Fort Pulaski. In reply, I can only say that I am here to defend this Fort, not to surrender it. The Confederates carried ammunition to their guns and prepared for action.

The first shell was fired from Tybee about 8:15 a.m., and by 9:30 all of the Union batteries were in full operation, each mortar firing at 15-minute intervals and the guns much more rapidly. Soon after the shelling from Tybee began, Pulaski’s guns opened up, first four casemate guns and then those on the barbette.

The first shots from both sides went wide of their targets but, as firing continued, both sides became more accurate. Most of the Federal mortar shells exploded in the air or fell into the mud outside the fort, but when a solid shot from a columbiad landed directly on the wall, the entire fort shook. A little after 10 o’clock, just such a solid shot entered an embrasure, dismantling the casemate gun and wounding several of the gun crew.

The firing from Tybee did more damage as the day progressed. Gillmore recalled later: By 1 o’clock in the afternoon it became evident that, unless our guns should suffer seriously from the enemy’s fire, a breach would be effected: with a glass it could be seen that the rifled projectiles were surely eating their way into the scarp of the pan-coupe and adjacent southeast face.

When the constant firing ceased for the night, after nine and a half hours’ duration, the commencement of a breach was plainly visible. It was equally manifest, to the surprise and disappointment of all experienced officers present, that the 13-inch mortars …were inefficient …. It was clear that for the reduction of Fort Pulaski we should have to depend on breaching alone. Gillmore was proving that rifled guns could destroy masonry fortifications designed to withstand artillery–for which he won extensive recognition.

From sunset until daylight, seven or eight shells an hour were thrown from Tybee onto Fort Pulaski to prevent repairs during the night, but the Confederates did succeed in repairing some of their guns. That, however, did short good, wrote one of them. Our fort was in shambles. Both sides resumed firing at daylight. Fort Pulaski’s fire was far less damaging than the Federals’–most of the guns on Tybee were masked behind sand ridges or otherwise hidden from sight.

About mid-morning, the Federals suffered their only casualty when a solid shot from Pulaski entered a gun embrasure and fatally wounded a soldier. By noon; at Fort Pulaski, there were over 20 casualties, including some men who were mortally wounded. Projectiles from the Federal rifle batteries were sweeping completely through the breach and striking the walls of the north magazine, in which was stored 40,000 pounds of black powder.

Twenty-five-year old Colonel Olmstead sadly faced the fact that the time had come for him to decide whether to fight on against overwhelming odds, endangering the lives of the entire garrison, or else admit defeat. He gave the order to surrender. The Confederate flag was lowered halfway and one final gun was fired from a casemate; then the flag was hauled on down and replaced by a white sheet. It was later determined that during the two-day battle, 5,275 shot and shell were fired against Fort Pulaski, but the walls were breached almost entirely by three guns–two 84-pounder and one 64-pounder rifles. That, said Northern military men, would revolutionize such warfare.

Olmstead met Gillmore and a party representing General Hunter at Cockspur Landing and led them to his quarters. The fort’s officers laid their weapons on a table, while the men of the garrison stacked their arms outside. After signing the articles of unconditional surrender, Olmstead said, I yield my sword, but I trust I have not disgraced it. The United States flag was then raised on the ramparts.

All the Confederate troops at Fort Pulaski were sent as prisoners to forts in New York Harbor, and Pulaski was garrisoned by Union soldiers. The Savannah River was now entirely closed to blockade-runners, and the large Federal naval force employed in the vicinity was freed for service elsewhere. Gillmore was appointed brigadier general 17 days after Fort Pulaski’s surrender.

A year later the Federal garrison on Cockspur Island was reduced to a small holding force. The great battles were being fought elsewhere and the South was gradually losing the war. But in late October 1864 Fort Pulaski again became actively involved in the war when about 550 prisoners of war– all Confederate officers, in rank from lieutenants to lieutenant colonels–were brought to Cockspur Island from a stockade on Morris Island, S.C.

In mid-December, Colonel Philip P. Brown, Pulaski’s commender, was ordered to limit each prisoner’s daily rations to one-quarter pound of bread, 10 ounces of cornmeal, and one half pint of pickles; for 43 unusually cold winter days, prisoners subsisted on that meager diet–or died. There were no blankets and no warming fires, neither coal nor wood to heat the casemates. The men grew weaker daily, and by midJanuary 1865 scurvy was taking its toll. But late in January, Pulaski’s prisoners were put back on full rations, which saved many lives. About 460 lived to be exchanged. The Confederate prisoners at Fort Pulaski were memorialized in Southern history as The Immortal Six Hundred.

On April 29, 1865, 20 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered, 200 guns were fired from Fort Pulaski’s ramparts to mark that surrender, which also ended Lee’s great military career, begun 35 years earlier on Cockspur Island. For Lee, and for the fort he helped design, the guns had grown silent. The war was over.

This article was written by Peggy Robbins and originally appeared in the March ‘98 issue of America’s Civil War magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to America’s Civil War magazine today!

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