Immortal 600: Prisoners Under Fire at Charleston Harbor During the American Civil War

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When Jones arrived in Charleston, the battered city had already endured eight months of bombardment. Though deaths from the shelling were few, the Federal artillery had caused irreparable destruction throughout the city, and very few buildings within Union cannon-shot range had escaped damage from shellfire. The streets were pockmarked with craters and littered with the bodies of unburied animals. Only weeds grew in the yards of what had once been lovely homes, and the jewel of Southern antebellum culture had been reduced to the apocalyptic landscape of a scarred battlefield. In a grim attempt at humor, remaining residents called the area most damaged by the Federal guns the ‘Gillmore District.’

Shortly after the Southern change of command, the Union also assigned a new man to Charleston. On May 26, 1864, Maj. Gen. John Gray Foster replaced Gillmore as the head of the Department of the South. Foster was also a West Point graduate, class of 1846. He had seen considerable combat in the Mexican War and was wounded while in command of sappers, miners and pontoniers.

Foster had been stationed at Fort Sumter as a captain when it fell in 1861. After the fort surrendered he returned to Washington, where he was placed in command of a New England brigade that he led to victories at Roanoke Island and New Bern, N.C. In 1863 he was transferred to Tennessee, where he fought at the siege of Knoxville and briefly commanded the Army of the Ohio. Following a fall from an unruly horse, Foster was transferred to the Department of the South to replace Gillmore. The relocation was a homecoming of sorts for the general. But no matter how badly he wanted to avenge Fort Sumter and seize Charleston, Foster realized that he lacked the means to successfully assault or outflank the massive defenses of the harbor town, and settled into continuing the siege by bombardment.

Lacking the manpower and resources to drive Foster’s Yankees away, General Jones looked for immediate ways to alleviate the bombardment. He turned to drastic measures to do so. On June 1, 1864, he requested from Jefferson Davis’ military adviser, General Braxton Bragg, that 50 Federal prisoners be sent to him to be ‘confined in parts of the city still occupied by civilians, but under the enemy’s fire.’ Davis approved his request, and orders were issued to move the unfortunate prisoners from Camp Ogelthorpe in Macon, Ga., to Charleston. On Sunday, June 12, trains arrived from Georgia bearing their unhappy cargo of Union captives.

The event was smugly reported in the local newspaper, the Charleston Mercury, which expressed pleasure at the plight of the endangered Federal officers. ‘For some time it has been known that a batch of Yankee prisoners, comprising the highest in rank now in our hands, were soon to be brought hither to share in the pleasures of the bombardment. These prisoners we understand will be furnished with comfortable quarters in that portion of the city most exposed to enemy fire. The commanding officer on Morris Island will be duly notified of the fact of their presence in the shelled district and if his batteries still continue at their wanton and barbarous work, it will be at the peril of the captive officers.’

The unlucky 50 Yankees, all officers–five of them brigadier generals–were placed in a home converted into a prison in the south end of Charleston. Jones sent a note to Foster the day after their arrival to tell the Federal general of the captives’ arrival and that they had been placed in ‘commodious quarters in a part of the city occupied by non-combatants….I should inform you that it is a part of the city…for many months exposed to the fire of your guns.’ With that action, the Confederate commander set in motion a chain of events that would endanger the lives of helpless prisoners of war and outrage the highest officials of both governments.

Foster was furious and immediately requested that 50 Confederate officer prisoners be sent from the prison at Fort Delaware, located on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River, and placed in front of the Union forts on Morris Island in retaliation. He sent a letter to Jones under flag of truce in which he argued that Charleston had munitions factories and wharves for receiving goods run past the blockade. He stated in angry terms that to ‘destroy these means of continuing the war is therefore our object and duty. You seek to defeat this effort, not by honorable means, but by placing unarmed and helpless prisoners under our fire.’

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

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