some of them 8 and 10 inch, with mortars. In Fort Johnson were twelve heavy guns, and near by on a sand-spit were six more. Half a mile from this was Battery Wimpler, with two 10-inch columbiads, and just beyond it Battery Glover, with three 8-inch rifles. Opposite these, on the other side of the channel, were Fort Ripley, a crib-work on a shoal, and Castle Pinckney, with three 10-inch guns and one 7-inch rifle. On a point of land stood an English-made cannon throwing a shot weighing seven hundred pounds, and four other 8 and 10 inch guns. Along the shaded promenade in Charleston, in front of the costliest mansions, were works built with cotton sacks filled with sand, where heavy guns were mounted. In the harbor were the iron-clad rams, mounting fourteen rifled cannon. The guns in the various batteries were so arranged that if the monitors were to pass Sumter they would come under a concentrated fire in the inner harbor.

"The farther the enemy got in, the worse off they would be. If they passed the outer batteries, they would have come within another circle of fire; had they succeeded in passing that, they would have been in the centre of still another circular fire. Some of the heaviest guns were on these interior batteries," said the Confederate General Ripley.

Admiral Dahlgren, commanding the Union fleet, had no intention of attempting to run past Sumter, but General Gillmore determined to gain possession of Morris Island. The people of the North demanded that the city of Charleston, which they regarded as having been the hotbed of secession, where the conspiracy, like a hot-house plant, had been nourished, should pay the penalty for its crime.

West of Morris Island were marshes threaded with inlets, where waterfowl built their nests, and where the reed-birds gathered in flocks. Colonel Serrell, of the Volunteer Engineers, planned the construction of a battery amid the tall grasses, from which shells might be fired into Charleston, a distance of nearly five miles. The mud was twenty feet deep. The location was under the fire of the Confederate batteries on James Island, and the work of construction must all be done in the night. Timber was floated from Folly Island through the creeks; piles were driven into the mud; bags were filled with sand and taken to the spot. A long causeway was constructed over the marsh. In all, thirteen thousand bags were used; together with one hundred and twenty-three timbers eighteen inches in diameter and fifty-five feet long; besides fifteen thousand feet of plank and boards. A 200-pounder Parrott gun was mounted.

On August 21st General Gillmore informed General Beauregard by

flag of truce that his batteries were in position to open fire upon Charleston, and demanded the evacuation of Morris Island and Fort Sumter, which General Beauregard refused to do. The soldiers called the battery the "Swamp Angel," but upon firing the thirty-fifth shell the cannon burst.

The sappers and miners digging the trenches in front of Wagner were annoyed by the Confederate sharp-shooters lying behind a sandridge, and the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment was selected to dislodge them. On the night of the 26th of August the mortars and batteries which had been firing through the day suddenly ceased, when up sprang the Massachusetts men, rushing across the sand, and capturing nearly all the Confederates. Following the soldiers came men with shovels, who in

a few minutes, before the Confederates in the fort could open fire, had a bank of sand thrown up completely sheltering them, enabling General Gillmore to open the fifth parallel within three hundred feet of the fort. The next night the men in the trenches were only one hundred feet from the fort. At that point the sand-ridge between the sea and the marsh was only two feet high and twenty-five feet wide. The Confederate batteries on James Island were sending shells across the marshes with great accuracy, and the shovellers could not dig any farther unless so hot a fire was poured upon the fort that the Confederates would be compelled to keep inside the bomb-proof. General Gillmore brought forward all his light mortars, placed his guns nearer, and arranged a powerful calcium light, with which he could illuminate Wagner at night and enable the gunners to sight the cannon, and the sharp-shooters to pick off those attempting to work the guns. The light dazzled the Confederates while it increased

the darkness of the Union trenches.

On September 5th the bombardment began from seventeen mortars, and thirteen Parrott rifled cannon; and from the frigate New Ironsides continued without cessation for forty-two hours a continuous stream of rifled shot and exploding shells, so terrible that the Confederates were