CHAPTER XVI.

PULASKI AND THE CONTRABANDS.

RECONNOISSANCE OF TYBEE ISLAND.-FORT PULASKI AND ITS BOMBARDMENT.-PREPARATIONS FOR ITS REDUCTION.-ITS BOMBARDMENT.-ITS SURRENDER.-FEELINGS OF THE BRITISH GOV ERNMENT. INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION.-NATIONAL FREEDMAN'S ASSOCIATION.-ADDRESS OF GEN. MCCLELLAN.-FINANCIAL AND MILITARY REPORTS.

IN November, 1861, Gen. Sherman, at Port Royal, received orders to make a reconnoissance of Tybee Island, at the mouth of the Savannah River, as a preliminary to the reduction of Fort Pulaski, which commands the approaches to Savannah, Georgia. Savannah is one of the most beautiful of the Southern cities, containing a population of about 6,000 whites and 6,000 slaves. It is situated on a plateau, about forty feet above the level of the river, and seventeen miles from its mouth. Like many other of the cities of the South, it has an oriental air of repose, in strong contrast with the life and vigor of Northern cities. Tybee Island, at the mouth of the river, is a low, barren expanse of sand ridges, about eight miles long and six wide. At the northern extremity of the island there is a lighthouse, and a strong Martello tower, one of those massive circular structures of masonry, such as the English scattered so profusely along their coasts to guard against the threatened invasion by Napoleon. Three war vessels were despatched upon this enterprise. On the 25th of November they appeared off Tybee, and commenced throwing shot and shell upon the island, at those points where any foe might lurk. Awaking no response, they landed, and found all the works abandoned. At the base of the tower they found a strong battery, but the rebels had been inspired with such terror by the successful bombardment of Forts Walker and Beauregard, that they did not venture to make any stand behind the feebler intrenchments of Tybee. Indeed, Commodore Tatnall announced that after the successful firing at Hilton Head, nothing the rebels had erected could withstand the National fleet. An intense panic had pervaded the whole line of the Southern coast. Several thousand troops took possession of the island; the flag of the Union was raised, and deliberate preparations were made for the reduction of Pulaski. The old Spanish tower was repaired and mounted with an effective armament of 32 and 64-pounders, while breast works were thrown up surrounding it, a mile in circumference. Only two thousand troops were landed upon the island, and the amount of labor performed by them seems incredible. This National fort, Pulaski, was considered one of the most impregnable in the United States. It had

been reared at an expense of a million of dollars, and was amply provided with all the appliances which modern military science could suggest. Its walls, of very hard brick, were nine feet thick and forty feet high. Its armament consisted of one hundred and fifty of the most massive and effective guns known in warfare. The fort was situated upon a small island, called Cockspur, and perfectly commanded the approaches in every direction. The rebels felt that they had at least one fort, Pulaski, which was impregnable. A rebel officer, writing from Pulaski to one of the Southern papers, said:*

"The enemy have gained little by taking Tybee Island. We have plenty of ammunition and men, and we defy them to come in range of our guns. We will show them the difference between Port Royal and Fert Pulaski."

Still the inhabitants of Savannah were terribly alarmed, for the National troops had established themselves within seventeen miles of their streets. All the families who could leave fled, carrying with them their slaves, as the most valuable portion of their property. Early in December, Gen. Gilmore, having made a careful reconnoissance of that part of the island where batteries could be planted which would reach Pulaski, reported that in his judgment the fort could be reduced by mortars and rifled guns established on the north-west end of Tybee Island. IIe recommended that eleven mortar batteries should be erected, so that a shell should be thrown every minute into the fort. He would also have as many rifled guns as mortars, throwing their shot still more rapidly. All necessary arrangements being made, the works were commenced on the 20th of February, under the superintendence of Gen. Gilmore, who deservedly acquired great credit for the engineering skill and administrative ability with which he conducted them to a triumphant conclusion. The eleven batteries were constructed with a parapet eight feet high, and a bomb-proof traverse between every two guns. The mortars, which were sunk in the ground, fired over the parapets; the guns through embrasures. The batteries were twenty-five yards apart, and connected by trenches affording safe communication between them. Several of the batteries had also a bomb-proof surgery, supplied with all requisites for surgical operations. Each battery had also a well of water. In addition to these a boat was also brought around, with a battery mounted upon it and stationed near a bend, in Lazaretto Creek, which placed it within very effective

* As our troops landed in Georgia an address was issued to the people of that State, signed by Howell Cobb, R. Toombs, M. J. Crawford, Thomas R. R. Cobb. The following extract gives an interesting view of the state of mind of those rebels.

"The foot of the oppressor is on the soil of Georgia. He comes with lust in his eye, poverty in his purse and hell in his heart. He comes a robber and a murderer. How shall you meet him? With the sword at the threshold! With death for him or for yourself! But more than this; let every woman have a torch, every child a firebrand; let the loved homes of youth be made ashes, and the fields of our heritage be made desolate. Let blackness and ruin mark your departing steps, if depart you must, and let a desert more terrible than Sahara welcome the Vandals. Let every city be leveled by the flames, and every village lost in ashes. Trust wife and children to the sure refuge and protection of God, preferring even for these loved ones the charnel house as a home than loathsome vassalage to a nation already sunk below the contempt of the civilized world."

range of the fort. The construction of these batteries involved immense labor, in which the negroes were exempted from taking any share. There was no wharf at Tybee. A heavy surf dashed upon the shore. The ponderous guns were pitched overboard at high tide from floats upon the beach, and when the tide went down were mounted on sling carts, and dragged by white hands over the sands to their destination. Beneath a blazing sun the young men of the North, all unaccustomed to such labor, were driven to these toils, when thousands of hearty, healthy, robust negroes were loitering about, not knowing what to do with themselves, but longing to seize the ropes and drag the guns with shouts of jubilee. Hundreds of our noblest young men, glorious, patriotic boys, from the refined homes of the North, fainted and sickened and died in the hospitals, from this unpardonable folly.

It was a distance of two and a half miles from the landing to the batteries. It required three hundred men to move a thirteen-inch mortar, weighing 17,000 pounds, loaded on a sling cart. They frequently got mired, and the labor was enormous in extricating them. Twenty-two of the guns were served, during the bombardment, by men who had performed these fatiguing labors. All the instruction in gunnery they could receive was such as they gained, at odd times, when they could be spared from other duties.

There were political complications mingling with the strife, which faithful history must not ignore. There was a party at the North, active and unscrupulous, who were anxious to preserve slavery. They desired, above all things, to save slavery from harm, as the only means of keeping the whole South united, as a sectional party. They could then, though in the great minority at the North, unite their votes with the slaveholding South, and thus secure, as they had done for years, the control of the Government, with all its enormous patronage. These men were not Secessionists. They were all in favor of the Union. They thought that the Union ought to have been maintained, in the first place, by yielding to the demands of the South, and adopting slavery as the corner-stone of the Constitution. They accused the friends of freedom in the North with being the guilty cause of the rebellion, by not acceding to these demands. They now wished to end the war by so exhausting the North, that it would earnestly invite the South back on its own terms; and by inflicting just enough trouble upon the South, to induce them to wish to return. tunately for the honor of our arms, many of the most prominent generals belonged to this party, and conducted the war at first upon these principles. Conciliation and compromise was the motto emblazoned upon their banners. Those officers who cherished different views, and pushed the war with all vigor, such men as Fremont and Sigel, and Hunter and Phelps, and others who might be mentioned, were denounced and thwarted in all ways. Hence few victories were obtained in those portions of the field, where enormous Union armies were marshaled, and held in repose in the presence of inferior foes.

Unfor

But the great mass of the Northern people, of both the old parties, democrat and republican, rose above these low and groveling thoughts.

They wished to see the Union restored upon principles which would prevent the formation of sectional parties, that we might be henceforth a homogeneous people, with harmonious institutions of freedom extending over the whole land. Slavery had kept the nation in a constant broil, from the days of the Revolution. Slavery had culminated in this hideous rebellion, which, in eighteen months, had cost the country, North and South, two hundred thousand lives, and an expenditure of two thousand millions of dollars, beside incidental expenses in the ravages of armies, the prostration of business, and time profitlessly employed, amounting to countless millions more. The loss to the nation was estimated, by an ingenious calculation, to amount to ten thousand millions of dollars. Slavery, continued, would inevitably bear the same fruit. Slavery strengthened the arm of rebellion, and palsied the energies of freedom. It dug trenches, fed rebel armies, and supported at home the families of traitors who were in the field; and therefore, every true patriot in the land, rising above the mercenary considerations of party, desired intensely that slavery might perish. God had opened the door, almost miraculously, for its overthrow. Every intelligent man admitted, that if the abolition of slavery was essential to the salvation of the nation, the constituted authorities were bound, as a military necessity, to pronounce its abolition. All constitutional restraints of the civil power were swept away, by the inexorable law of military necessity. Such were the views of political patriotism. With the Christian community, still higher views prevailed. They accepted the doctrine of the fraternity of man, as taught by our Saviour. They wept over the wrongs inflicted upon their colored brother. They deemed slavery a heinous sin in the sight of God, and believed that it was always politic to do right, and had no hope that God would bless a hypocritical nation, pretending to love liberty, and yet consigning four millions of its innocent poor to debasement, ignorance, and unpaid toil. In every disaster, as in Egypt's plagues, they heard the voice of God, saying, "Let my people go.'

At the commencement of the conflict, the slaveholders were also in favor of Union. Permanent separation, as we have mentioned, was not their original plan. They hoped that the threat of secession would bring the North to terms. Failing in that, they tried secession itself, hoping thus to secure the adoption of their wishes,-then to reconstruct the Union on the basis of slavery. But as the conflict continued, becoming exasperated, they vehemently affirmed that they would not, upon any terms whatever, live in union with the freemen of the North. In this last resolve, and this only, their Northern allies were compelled to abandon them. Still they hoped to coax them back, by the most abounding protestations of submission. They were willing to lie low at the foot of the slaveholder, if he would but aid them in getting office.

Thus it was that for weary months the armies of freedom struggled unavailingly, often led by generals who hated freedom and loved slavery. The hearts of many patriots were faint. In every corps of the army there were officers who nobly espoused the cause of universal liberty, but in the early months of the war they were so trammeled by their superiors, that