sacrifices of those who had fought through the weary years, to know that Sumter, Moultrie, the city, and the State were redeemed from the worst system of vassalage, that our country was still a nation, renewed and regenerated by its baptism of fire and blood, that truth and right were vindicated before the world; and to look down the coming years, and know that Freedom was secured to all beneath the folds of the flag that had withstood the intrigues of cabals and the shock of battle, and that Christianity and civilization, twin agents of human progress, had received an impetus that would forever keep us in the van of nations.

Looking at that flag, involuntarily I repeated the words of the song which I heard when the shadows of night fell upon the gory field of Antietam, sung by our wounded in one of the hospitals:

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHARLESTON.

A CITY of ruins, - silent, mournful, in deepest humiliation. It was early morning when we reached the wharf, piled with merchandise, not busy with commercial activity as in other days, but deserted, its timbers rotting, its planks decayed, its sheds tumbling in and reeling earthward. The slips, once crowded with steam and sailing vessels, were now vacant, except that an old sloop with a worm-eaten gunwale, tattered sails, and rigging hanging in shreds, alone remained.

A few fishermen's dories only were rocking on the waves, tethered to the wharves by rotten ropes, where the great cotton Argos in former years had shipped or landed their cargoes.

*

Before the sailors had time to make fast the steamer, myself and friend were up the pier. The band was playing "Hail, Columbia," and the strains floated through the desolate city, awakening wild enthusiasm in the hearts of the colored people, who came rushing down the grass-grown streets to wel

come us.

When near the upper end of the pier we encountered an old man bending beneath the weight of seventy years, such years as slavery alone can pile upon the soul. He bowed very

low.

"Are you not afraid of us Yankees?"

"No, massa, God bless you. I have prayed many a night for you to come, and now you are here. Bless the Lord! Bless the Lord!"

He kneeled, clasped my hand, and with streaming eyes poured out his thanks to God.

Let us, before entering upon a narrative of military inci dents, look at Charleston as she was at the beginning of the

* James Redpath.

Rebellion, when the great cotton mart of the Atlantic coast, with lines of steamships to New York and Boston. Then her wharves not only were piled with bales of cotton and tierces of rice, or with goods from the warehouses and manufactories of New England and Great Britain, but, next to New Orleans, she was the most populous city of the South, and, in proportion to the number of inhabitants, the wealthiest. Her banks and insurance offices were as stable as those of Wall Street. She aspired to be the commercial emporium of the South. The newspapers of Charleston taught the people to believe that Secession and non-intercourse with the North would make the city the rival of New York. She first adopted the vagaries of her own son, Calhoun, on the rights of States. She proclaimed cotton king, not of America, but of the world, and in her pride believed that all nations could be brought to do her homage. She was rich and aristocratic, and looked upon the people of the North with contempt.

"The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Huguenots," wrote De Bow, "who settled the South, naturally hate, contemn, and despise the Puritans, who settled the North. The former are master races; the latter a slave race, descendants of the Anglo-Saxon serfs."

Through ignorance and vanity such assertions were accepted as truths. Boys and girls of the common schools of the North could have shown that, in the contests between the Cavaliers and Puritans, the Cavaliers were defeated; that the Jacobites went down before the party which placed William of Orange on the throne.

Charleston called the people of South Carolina into council. The Mercury-that able but wicked advocate of Secessionthrew out from its windows this motto: "One voice and millions of strong arms to uphold the honor of South Carolina! Not the honor of the nation or of the people, but of South Carolina, the Mephistopheles of the Confederacy, the seducer of States. With honeyed words, and well-timed flattery she detached State after State from the Union.

"Whilst constituting a portion of the United States," said South Carolina, in her address to the slaveholding States, "it has been your statesmanship which has guided it in its mighty

strides to power and expansion. In the field and in the cabinet you have led the way to renown and grandeur."

The ministers of her churches were foremost in abetting the Rebellion. Church and State; merchant and planter, all from high to low of the white population, brought themselves to believe that their influence was world-wide, through King Cotton and his prime minister, African Slavery. Hence the arrogance, fierce intolerance, and mad hate which had their only prototypes in the Rebellion of the Devil and his angels against Beneficent Goodness.

The siege of Charleston was commenced on the 21st of August, 1863, by the opening of the "Swamp-Angel" battery. On the 7th of September Fort Wagner was taken, and other guns were trained upon the city, compelling the evacuation of the lower half. For fourteen months it had been continued; not a furious bombardment, but a slow, steady fire from day to day. About thirteen thousand shells had been thrown into the town, nearly a thousand a month.

They were fired at a great elevation, and were plunging shots, striking houses on the roof and passing down from attic to basement, exploding in the chambers, cellars, or in the walls. The effect was a complete riddling of the houses. Brick walls were blown into millions of fragments, roofs were torn to pieces; rafters, beams, braces, scantlings, were splintered into jack-straws. Churches, hotels, stores, dwellings, public buildings, and stables, all were shattered. There were great holes in the ground, where cart-loads of earth had been excavated in a twinkling.

In 1860 the population of the city was 48,509, — 26,969 whites, 17,655 slaves, and 3,885 free colored. The first flight from the city was in December, 1861, when Port Royal fell into the hands of Dupont; but when it was found that the opportunity afforded at that time for an advance inland was not improved, most of those who had moved away returned. The attack of Dupont upon Sumter sent some flying again; but not till the messengers of the "Swamp Angel" dropped among them did the inhabitants think seriously of leaving. Some went to Augusta, others to Columbia, others to Cheraw. Many wealthy men bought homes in the country. The upper

part of the city was crowded. Men of fortune who had lived in princely style were compelled to put up with one room. Desolation had been coming on apace. The city grew old rapidly, and had become the completest ruin on the continent. There were from ten to fifteen thousand people still remaining in it, two thirds of whom were colored.

When Sherman flanked Orangeburg, Hardee, who commanded the Rebels in Charleston, saw that he must evacuate the place. There was no alternative; he must give up Sumter, Moultrie, and the proud old city to the Yankees. It was bitter as death! A few of the heavy guns were sent off to North Carolina, all the trains which could be run on the railroad were loaded with ammunition and commissary supplies, the guns in the forts were spiked, and the troops withdrawn.

The inhabitants had been assured that the place should be defended to the last; and in the Courier office we found the following sentence in type, which had been set up not twentyfour hours before the evacuation: "There are no indications that our authorities have the first intention of abandoning Charleston, as I have ascertained from careful inquiry!" plicity to the end.

Du

The Rebellion was inaugurated through deception, and had been sustained by an utter disregard of truth.

Friday and Saturday were terrible days. Carts, carriages, wagons, horses, mules, all were brought into use. The railroad trains were crowded. Men, women, and children fled, terror-stricken, broken-hearted, humbled in spirit, from their homes. How different from the 12th of April, 1861, when they stood upon the esplanade of the battery, sat upon the house-tops, clustered in the steeples, looking seaward, shouting and waving their handkerchiefs as the clouds of smoke and forked flames rolled up from Sumter!

"God don't pay at the end of every week, but he pays at last, my Lord Cardinal," said Anne of Austria.

General Hardee remained in the city till Friday night, the 17th instant, when he retired with the army, leaving a detachment of cavalry to destroy what he could not remove. Every building and shed in which cotton had been stored was fired on Saturday morning. The ironclads "Palmetto State,"