For those living in South Carolina and Georgia, the Fall of Fort Pulaski was a shock and, perhaps, a wake-up call. Here are some of their reactions, taken from A Scratch with the Rebels. For the Yankee teachers and missionaries newly arrived
on St. Helena Island, their first exposure to the realities of war was
frightening. Susan Walker, assigned to Pope's plantation, wrote: "Heavy
firing all morning yesterday and commenced again at 10 last evening, still
continued till about 2 P.M.—probably cannonading Fort Pulaski 30 miles
distant—so heavy as to shake our house. If Sesech gain, we will hang from the
highest tree. I look at these tall pines in the grove near my window and wonder
which branch will hold me."
On the Confederate
side, Mary Chesnut realized how serious the loss was. In her diary, she wrote,
"Pulaski fallen! What more is there to fall?" Emma Holmes, that staunch daughter of the
Confederacy, was shocked by the news. On 15 April, she wrote in her diary:
"Willie Guerard has just arrived & says that [Fort] Pulaski has really
fallen which many doubted. But nothing further is known as none of the garrison
have escaped as was reported. We only know that the detested flag of U.S. now
waves over it . . . Later, refusing
to believe that the Union forces could be stronger than those of the
Confederacy, she tried to explain the loss away: "Our men fought gallantly
. . . but the fort was in such a dilapidated condition that the walls trembled
and tottered." Confederate
soldiers, too, recognized the blow that had befallen the Southern cause. Gus
Smythe commented: "No news except for the fall of Pulaski! What a blow to
our cause! & on the 12 of April, too [the anniversary of the
taking of Fort Sumter]. We are in good spirits, however, on the whole, tho'
this bad luck has staggered us somewhat." Milton Maxcy Leverett admitted that the fall of Pulaski caught him by
surprise and blamed it on "treachery or cowardice." He warned his
family that the fall of Savannah was now "only a question of time."
He had not heard a full explanation of the Federals' use of the new rifled
guns, which might have made him even more morose about the outcome. He still
thought that the shells had been from mortars, fired into the air "very
much like a monkey dropping a cocoanut out of the tree on the ground in order
to burst it." |
