e large houses, pillared, with high piazzas,
stand apart one from another among gardens. With few exceptions they
were built before the middle of the century and all, with one exception,
show the classical taste of those days. The mariner, entering the
spacious inner sea that is Charleston Harbor, sights this row of stately
mansions even before he crosses the bar seven miles distant. Holding
straight onward up into the land he heads first for the famous little
island where, nowadays, in their halo of thrilling recollection, the
walls of Sumter, rising sheer from the bosom of the water, drowse idle.
Close under the lee of Sumter, the incoming steersman brings his ship
about and chooses, probably, the eastward of two huge tentacles of the
sea between which lies the city's long but narrow peninsula. To the
steersman it shows a skyline serrated by steeples, fronted by sea,
flanked southward by sea, backgrounded by an estuary, and looped about
by a sickle of wooded islands. This same scene, so far as city and
nature go, was beheld by the crowds that swarmed East Battery, a
flagstone marine parade along the seaward side of the boulevard that
faces Sumter; that filled the windows and even the housetops; that
watched the bombardment with the eagerness of an audience in an
amphitheater; that applauded every telling shot with clapping of hands
and waving of shawls and handkerchiefs. The fort lay distant from
them about three miles, but only some fifteen hundred yards from Fort
Johnston on one side and about a mile from Fort Moultrie on the other.
From both of these latter, the cannon of those days were equal to the
task of harassing Sumter. Early in the morning of the 12th of April,
though not until broad day had come, did Anderson make reply. All that
day, at first under heavily rolling cloud and later through curiously
misty sunshine, the fire and counterfire continued. "The enthusiasm and
fearlessness of the spectators," says the Charleston Mercury, "knew no
bounds." Reckless observers even put out in small boats and roamed about
the harbor almost under the guns of the fort. Outside the bar, vessels
of the relieving squadron were now visible, and to these Anderson
signaled for aid. They made an attempt to reach the fort, but only part
of the squadron had arrived; and the vessels necessary to raise the
siege were not there. The attempt ended in failure. When night came, a
string of rowboats each carrying a huge torch kept watch a