Peculiarities of American Cities

Two-thirds of the cars still remained, filled with troops, besides others loaded with ammunition and baggage. Mayor Brown hastened to the depot, in order to prevent any disturbance. The troops were ordered to leave the cars and form into line. While forming they were surrounded by a dense mass of people, who impeded their march, threw great quantities of stones, and knocked down and severely injured two soldiers.

Marching through the city, from the President Street Depot to the Pratt Street Bridge, they were pursued by the excited crowd, who continued to throw stones, and even fired muskets at them. When they reached Gay street, where the track had been torn up, they were again violently assaulted by a fresh mob, and a number knocked down and wounded. At the corner of South and Pratt streets a man fired a pistol into the ranks of the military, when those in the rear ranks immediately wheeled and fired upon their assailants, wounding several. The guns of the wounded soldiers were seized, and fired upon the ranks, killing two soldiers. Reaching Calvert street, the troops succeeded in checking their pursuers by a rapid fire, and were not again seriously molested until they reached Howard street, where still another mob had assembled.

The police did their utmost to protect the troops from assault, but were pressed back by the excited crowd. The soldiers left the Camden station about half-past twelve o'clock, and a body of infantry, about one hundred and fifty strong, from one of the Northern States, which had arrived meantime, next attracted the malevolence of the crowd. The excitement was now intense. A man displayed the flag of the Confederate States, and a general panic ensued. As many as twenty shots were fired, happily without injury to any one, and cobblestones fell like hail. At last the soldiers gained refuge in the cars. Other troops, by order of Governor Hicks, were sent back to the borders of the State, and the military was called out and quiet restored, by evening. Nine citizens of Baltimore had been killed, and many wounded; while twenty-five wounded Massachusetts troops were sent to the Washington Hospital, and their dead numbered two.

Thus Baltimore shares with Charleston the doubtful honor of being first in the great civil war which devastated the country and sent desolation to many thousand homes, both north and south. Charleston fired the first gun, and Baltimore shed the first blood.

During the succeeding night, a report reaching the city that more Northern troops were on their way southward, the bridge at Canton, the two bridges between Cockeysville and Ashland, also the bridges over Little Gunpowder and Bush rivers were destroyed, by order of the authorities of Baltimore. Upon a representation of the matter to President Lincoln, he ordered that "no more troops should be brought through Baltimore, if, in a military point of view, and without interruption or opposition, they can be marched around Baltimore." The transmission of mails, and removal of provisions from the city, were suspended, by the order of the Mayor and Board of Police. Four car-loads of military stores and equipments, sufficient to furnish a thousand men, belonging to the Government, were thus detained. On the twenty-fourth of the month the city had the appearance of a military camp. Twenty-five thousand volunteers had enlisted, and four hundred picked men left the city for the Relay House, on the Baltimore and Ohio Road, for the purpose of seizing and protecting that point, in order to cut off communications with Washington by that route.

For a week an unparalleled excitement prevailed in Baltimore, which was succeeded by a counter-revolution, when the volunteer militia were dismissed, and a large number of troops landed at Fort McHenry and shipped for Washington, from Locust Point. On the fifth of May General Butler removed a portion of his troops to Baltimore, and they were permitted to enter and remain in the city without disturbance. As they proceeded on their way to Federal Hill, they were even greeted with cheers, while ladies at windows and doors waved their handkerchiefs and applauded. On the sixteenth of May the passenger trains between Baltimore and Washington resumed their regular trips. On the twenty-seventh of June, Marshal of Police Kane was arrested and escorted to Fort McHenry, on the charge of being at the head of an unlawful combination of men organized for resistance to the laws of the United States and the State of Maryland. On the first of July the Commissioners of Police were arrested, for having acted unlawfully. On the sixteenth of July General Dix was put in command of the troops stationed at Baltimore, and the city thenceforth remained tranquil. At the fall elections a full vote was cast, which resulted in the Union candidates receiving a very large majority. At the meeting of the Legislature, it appropriated seven thousand dollars for the relief of the families of the Massachusetts troops killed and wounded at Baltimore on April nineteenth.

On June thirtieth, 1863, Major General Schenck, in command at Baltimore, put that city and Maryland under martial law. The value of merchandise exported that year from Baltimore was $8,054,112, and her imports during the same time were $4,098,189, showing that although on the borderland of strife, her commerce was in an exceedingly healthy condition. During July a number of her citizens were arrested, on a charge of being disloyal to the government. On the Fourth of July all citizens were required by the Commander to show their colors, from ten o'clock A.M. to six o'clock, P.M.; an absence of the national flag being considered tantamount to a confession of disloyalty. In 1864 the State adopted a new Constitution, which conferred freedom upon the slaves within her borders, and in November a Freedman's Bureau was established by Major General Wallace, having its headquarters at Baltimore.

The following year saw the close of the war, and Baltimore, which had not suffered like her sister cities at the South, her port being free from blockade, but had rather witnessed increased prosperity arising from the demands of the war, continued her prosperous career. Although many violent disunionists had found their homes within the city, the popular sentiment had grown strongly in favor of the North, and Baltimore had come to see that she had little to lose and much to gain by the reestablishment of the Union.

The bitterness of the old war times has passed away, and, as if to emphasize this fact, the Grand Army of the Republic was invited to hold a reunion in Baltimore in September, 1882. Accepting the invitation, her citizens vied with each other in honoring the veterans of the war, and made their visit a regular ovation. Of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, who had passed through Baltimore on that fateful day in April, twenty-one years before, and who suffered from the fury of an ungoverned mob, only one member attended the reunion, Captain C. P. Lord, a resident of Vineland, New Jersey. He was lionized on every hand.

This Grand Army reunion had many pleasant and amusing features. Here men met each other again who had last parted on the battlefield or in a Southern prison. Here the dead seemed to come to life, and the lost were found. Many officers and soldiers of the Confederate army were also present, and it was as satisfactory as curious, as more than once happened during this occasion, to have two men meet and clasp hands in a cordial greeting, as one of them said to the other, "The last time we met I tried to put a bullet hole through you on a battlefield;" or, "I took you prisoner when I saw you last;" or, "This empty sleeve, or these crutches, I must thank you for."

The gathering was one which will long be remembered by Union and Confederate soldiers, and by the citizens of Baltimore as well. It was the inauguration of an era of good feeling between the North and the South. All personal and sectional enmity had died out, and this gathering joined those who had represented, on one side the North and on the other the South, in that great intestine struggle which is now so long past, and the terror of which, thank God, is being gradually obliterated by time from our memories, in new fraternal bonds, which are a good augury for the preservation of our Union. When soldiers who suffered so much at each other's hands, who were stirred by all the evil passions which war develops, and who bore the brunt of the conflict, offering all, if need be, as a sacrifice on the altar of the cause they had espoused, can so forget the past, and shaking hands over the chasm which divided them, look forward to a happy and concordant future, surely civilians should be willing to bury the hatred and prejudice which has so embittered the past, and live only for a common country, made of many parts whose interests are identical.

CHAPTER VI.

CHARLESTON

First Visit to Charleston. – Jail Yard. – Bombardment of the City. – Roper Hospital. – Charleston During the War. – Secession of South Carolina. – Attack and Surrender of Fort Sumter. – Blockade of the Harbor. – Great Fire of 1861. – Capitulation in 1865. – First Settlement of the City. – Battles of the Revolution. – Nullification Act. – John C. Calhoun. – Population of the City. – Commerce and Manufactures. – Charleston Harbor. – "American Venice." – Battery. – Streets, Public Buildings and Churches. – Scenery about Charleston. – Railways and Steamship Lines. – An Ancient Church. – Magnolia Cemetery. – Drives near the City. – Charleston Purified by Fire.

My first introduction to the city of Charleston can scarcely be said to have been under propitious circumstances. True, a retinue of troops conducted my companions and myself, with military pomp, to our quarters in the city. But these quarters, instead of being any one of its fine hotels, were none other than the Charleston Jail Yard, for the year was 1864, and we were prisoners of war.

After a varied experience of prison life at Richmond, Danville, Macon and Savannah, I had been sent, with a number of others, to Charleston, South Carolina, to be placed under the fire of our batteries, which were then bombarding the city. We had received more humane treatment at Savannah than at any previous place of detention; therefore it was with a sinking of the heart that we found ourselves, when we arrived at our destination, thrown into the jail yard at Charleston, which was the grand receptacle of all Union prisoners in that city. The jail was a large octagonal building, four stories high, surmounted by a lofty tower. A workhouse and a gallows also occupied the yard. The jail building was for the accommodation of criminals, military prisoners, and Federal and Rebel deserters, all of whom at least had the advantage of shelter from sun and storm. The war prisoners were permitted the use of the yard only, which was in the most filthy condition conceivable, having been long used as a prison-pen, without receiving any cleaning or purification whatever. The only shelter afforded us were the remnants of a few tents, which had been cut to pieces, more or less, by former prisoners, to make themselves clothing.

This jail yard was in the southeastern portion of the city, and apparently directly under the fire of our batteries on Morris Island. But though the shells came screaming over our heads, and proved a subject of interest, discussion, and even mathematical calculation among the prisoners, who were thankful for anything which should take their minds, even momentarily, from the misery which they endured, so carefully were they aimed, not to do us mischief, that though they exploded all about us – in front, behind, and on either side – not one of them fell within the prison enclosure. The scene at night was of peculiar beauty. These messengers of death presented the spectacle of magnificent fireworks, and every explosion sounded as the voice of a friend to us, assuring us that the great Northern army was still exerting itself to crush out the rebellion and open our prison doors and set us free.

Reaching Charleston and its jail yard September twelfth, 1864, on the twenty-ninth I was transferred to the Roper Hospital, having given my parole that I would not attempt to escape. The quarters here were so much more comfortable that it was almost like a transition from hell to heaven. Leaving behind me the filthiness of the jail yard, and my bed there on the chill, bare ground, where I had protection against neither heat nor cold, storm nor sunshine, to be permitted the freedom of the beautiful garden of the hospital, and to sleep even upon the hard floor of the piazza, were luxuries before unenjoyed in my experience of southern prisons. And here the Sisters of Charity, those angels among women, did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the sick, and to add to the comfort of us all. Their ministrations were bestowed indiscriminately on Rebels and Federals, with a charity as broad and boundless as true religion.

On October fifth we were ordered to leave Charleston, and were sent, in the foulest of cattle cars, to Columbia, the Capital of the State. We left Charleston without a regret. It was the breeding place of the rankest treason, the cradle of the Rebellion, and the scene of untold cruelties to Union prisoners. At the time of our brief visit to the city, it was undergoing all the horrors of an actual siege. About one-third of its territory had been destroyed by fire during the early part of the war, caused by shells thrown from the Union batteries on Morris Island. This portion of the city was deserted by all its inhabitants save the negroes, who, during every brief cessation in the bombardment, flocked in and took possession, rent free, to scatter as quickly when one or more of them had been killed by the sudden appearance and explosion of shells in this quarter. The balance of the city was forsaken by non-combatants, and the blockade had put an end to all her commerce. The quiet industries of peace had given place to all the turmoil of war. Her streets were filled with military, while the boom of the distant batteries, the whiz of the flying shells, and the noise of their explosion, were daily and familiar sounds.

During the four years of the war, Charleston was one of the chief points of Federal attack, though it remained in possession of the Confederate forces until the beginning of 1865. These were four terrible years to the city. Yet her sufferings she had brought upon herself. The first open and public movement in favor of the dissolution of the Union was made in that city. South Carolina was the first to call a State convention, and to secede from the Union. This convention was held at Columbia, the Capital of the State, but was adjourned to Charleston, where the Ordinance of Secession was unanimously passed on the twentieth of December, 1860. Fort Sumter, which was one of the largest forts in Charleston, a massive fortress of solid masonry, standing on an island commanding the principal entrance, at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, was in command of Major Robert Anderson, with a garrison of eighty men. On the twenty-seventh of December he ran up the stars and stripes. Governor Pickens immediately demanded a surrender of the fort, which was promptly refused. Early on Friday morning, April twelfth, 1861, the initial gun of the terrible four years' war was fired by the Rebel forces from the howitzer battery on James Island, west of Sumter. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan Island, on the northeast, the gun battery at Cumming's Point, the northwest extremity of Morris Island, and other batteries and fortifications which the Confederates had seized and appropriated to their own use, all followed in a deadly rain of shells upon Sumter. The firing was kept up for thirty-five hours, and Sumter made a vigorous defence, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the supplies exhausted, and the magazine surrounded by flames, when Major Anderson accepted the terms of capitulation offered by General Beauregard.

Upon the surrender of the Fort, which was received as a good omen by the South, troops began to pour into the city, so that by the sixteenth of the same month as many as ten thousand had arrived. The blockade of the port was commenced on the tenth of May, and continued until the close of the war. In the latter part of 1861 an attempt was made by the Federal government to seal up the channel of the harbor with sunken ships, to prevent the egress of privateers. On the twenty-first of December seventeen vessels were sunk, in three or four rows, across the channel. But this attempt at blockade proved a failure. The current washed some of them away, and many passages in a water front of six miles were left unobserved, and more vessels ran the blockade and reached the city, than at any other southern port.

On the tenth of December, 1861, a fire broke out in the city, which destroyed nearly all its public buildings, banks and insurance offices, and several churches, besides many dwellings, reducing thousands to homelessness and the extremity of want. The loss occasioned by this conflagration was estimated at ten millions of dollars.

In 1863, the women, children and other non-combatants were ordered out of the city, and free transportation, food and lodgings were furnished those unable to pay for them. Morris Island had been captured by the Federal Army, who used it as a point of attack against Sumter and the city. Its shells had wrought destruction in all parts of the city, especially in its lower portions. On February seventeenth, 1865, Charleston, which had withstood all attacks from the seaward, capitulated to the Union forces, Columbia having been captured by Sherman.

The history of Charleston goes back to earliest colonial times. In 1671 a few persons located themselves on Ashley River, at Old Charleston. But in 1680 this settlement was abandoned, and the foundations of the present city laid, several miles nearer the sea. The whole country, up to 1671, between the thirtieth and thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, was called Carolina, having received the name in honor of Charles IX, of France. In that year the division was made between the Northern and Southern provinces. In 1685 the young settlement received a considerable influx of French Huguenot refugees.

During the early part of the eighteenth century the war of Queen Anne against France and Spain greatly disturbed the young colony; and a little later the Indians threatened its existence. All the inhabitants of the region took refuge at Charleston, which was vigorously defended.

In 1700, the same year that Kidd was captured and taken to England, no less then seven pirates were secured, and executed at Charleston. Subsequently others shared the same fate.

South Carolina was among the foremost of the American colonies to strike for independence. On the twenty-eighth of June, 1776, Charleston was attacked by the British, an attempt being made to destroy the military works on Sullivan's Island. But Colonel Moultrie, in honor of whom the fort was subsequently named, made a gallant defence and repulsed them. In 1779 they made a second attack upon the city, this time approaching it by land, but were again compelled to retreat. Sir Henry Clinton, with seven or eight thousand men, opened his batteries upon Charleston on the second of April, 1780. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, was compelled to surrender on the fourteenth, and the city yielded on May eleventh. The British retained possession of the city until the close of the war.

Charleston took a prominent part in the passage of the nullification act by the State, which maintained that any one of the States might set aside or nullify any act of Congress which it deemed unconstitutional or oppressive. The occasion of this nullification act was the Tariff Laws of 1828, which were not considered favorable to the Southern States. A convention of the State declared them null and void, and made preparations to resist their execution. John C. Calhoun, who was at that time Vice-President under Andrew Jackson, resigned his office, became a leader in the nullification movement, and was the father of the doctrine of State Sovereignty, the legitimate outcome of the principles of which was the late attempt to dissolve the Union.

The population of Charleston in 1800 was 18,711; in 1850, 42,985 inhabitants; in 1860, 40,519; in 1870, 48,956; and in 1880, 50,000 inhabitants. It has not made so rapid a growth as other cities, even in the South, but is, nevertheless, a prosperous town, with large commercial, and since the war, large manufacturing interests. It is one of the chief shipping ports for cotton, and also exports rice, lumber, naval stores and fertilizers. Immense beds of marl were discovered in the vicinity of the city in 1868, and now the manufacture of fertilizers from marl and phosphate is one of its principal industries. There are also flour and rice mills, carriage and wagon factories and machine shops. The city is learning that the surest foundation stone for its future prosperity is its manufacturing interests; and, probably, the political battle of 1861, could it be fought over again to-day, in that city, would find the nullifiers largely in the minority. The city which was so marred and blemished during its long state of siege, has been rebuilt, and all traces of the fratricidal conflict removed; and though Charleston would not be true to her traditions if she did not still cherish a strong Southern sentiment, the years which have passed since the cessation of hostilities have done much toward softening the asperities of feeling on both sides.

As a seaboard city, Charleston is most favorably situated. It has an excellent harbor, seven miles in length, with an average width of two miles, landlocked on all sides, except an entrance about a mile in width. This entrance is blocked by a bar, which, however, serves both as a bulwark and a breakwater. Of its two passages, its best gives twenty-two feet in depth at flood tide, and sixteen feet at ebb.

The harbor of Charleston is impregnable, as the Union troops learned to their cost during the late war. Standing directly in the channel are forts Ripley and Sumter. On a point extending out into the strait, between the two, is Fort Johnson. Directly in front of the city, one mile distant from it, is Castle Pinckney, covering the crest of a mud shoal, and facing the entrance. Sullivan's Island, a long, low, gray stretch of an island, dotted here and there by clumps of palmettoes, lies on the north of the entrance of the harbor, with Fort Moultrie on its extreme southern point, as a doorkeeper to the harbor. On the southern side is Morris Island, long, low and gray also, with tufts of pines instead of palmettoes, and with batteries at intervals along its whole sea front, Fort Wagner standing near its northern end. Sullivan's Island, the scene of fierce conflict during the Revolution, and later, during the Rebellion, is to-day the Long Branch or Coney Island of South Carolina, containing many beautiful cottages and fine drives, and furnishing good sea bathing. The village occupies the point extending into the harbor.

As one approaches Charleston from the sea, the name which has been applied to it, of the "American Venice," seems not inappropriate. The shores are low, and the city seems to rise out of the water. It is built something after the manner of New York, on a long and narrow peninsula, formed by the Cooper and Ashley rivers, which unite in front of the city. It has, like New York, its Battery, occupying the extreme point of the peninsula, its outlook commanding the entire harbor, bristling with fortifications, so harmless in time of peace, so terrible in war. The Battery contains plots of thin clover, neatly fenced and shelled promenades, a long, solid stone quay, which forms the finest sea-walk in the United States, and has a background of the finest residences in the city, three storied, and faced with verandahs. The dwelling-houses throughout the city are mostly of brick or wood, and have large open grounds around them, ornamented with trees, shrubbery, vines and flowers. The city is laid out with tolerable regularity, the streets generally crossing each other at right angles. King street, running north and south, is the fashionable promenade, containing the leading retail stores. Meeting street, nearly parallel with King, contains the jobbing and wholesale stores. Broad street, the banks, brokers' and insurance offices. Meeting street, below Broad, Rutledge street, and the west end of Wentworth street, contain fine private residences.