THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

The Immortal 600: chapter 6

"The Immortal 600"
Charleston, S. C.

During the Summer of 1864 both Federal and Confederate heavy artillery mortar shells flew back and forth over Charleston Harbor enroute to their intended targets. Even the city, populated by civilians, fell victim to this death from the sky. In the midst of this tumult an unfortunate group of Confederate prisoners were living in a stockade built in the path of those bombs, their Morris Island prison pen had been deliberately placed in harm's way. In essence, these beleaguered confederate prisoners, baking in the sun, were being used as human shields. It was a sad commentary on how nasty the Civil War had become. Knowingly exposing helpless prisoners to artillery fire seems unconscionable.
War, however, has a way of fostering inhumane behavior.

This inhuman situation had its start the previous summer. On August 21, 1863, Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, the Federal commander in the Charleston area at the time, had sent a message to General P.G.T. Beauregard, informing him of the Union army's intention to fire into Charleston because he considered it a military target. He informed the General Beauregard that the shelling would start sometime after midnight, August 22.

Beauregard protested, stating that he did not have adequate time to evacuate the city of its noncombatants. Nevertheless, the next morning, Federal mortars sent their deadly projectiles into both the residential and business areas of downtown Charleston.        

Gillmore placed an 8-inch Parrott rifle in the marsh between Morris Island and James Island four miles from the city. The cannon, nicknamed the "Swamp Angel," fired 16 shells into Charleston before dawn, starting a bombardment that would last 567 days. In the month of January 1864 alone, 1,500 mortar shells were fired into the city. On April 20, 1864, Maj. Gen. Samuel Jones arrived in Charleston to take command of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida from Beauregard, who had been reassigned to North Carolina.

At the time of Jones arrival, the battered city had already endured eight months of bombardment. The Federal artillery had caused irreparable destruction throughout the city and the streets were pockmarked with craters and littered with the bodies of unburied animals.

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 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, 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 on Sunday, June 12 the unfortunate prisoners arrived by trains from Camp Oglethorpe in Macon, Ga.

The fifty (50) unlucky 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 to tell 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." This action 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 immediately requested that 50 Confederate officer prisoners be sent from the prison at Fort Delaware and placed in front of the Union forts on Morris Island in retaliation. He sent a letter to Jones in which he argued that Charleston had munitions factories and wharves for receiving goods run past the blockade. He stated 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." Jones was insenced and fired back a letter chastising Foster and the Federal armies for their conduct throughout the war. He closed his dispatch with these words:"Under the foregoing statement of facts, I cannot but regard the desultory firing on this city which you dignify by the name bombardment, from its commencement to this hour, as antichristian, inhuman, and utterly indefensible by any law, human or divine." Jones was in no mood to be chastised by his opponent.