g back the improvised gunboats that the
Confederates sent out in the forlorn hope of breaking through the
blockade, the armies of the North were closing in upon the doomed
city. All the North cried aloud for the capture of Charleston. It was
the city which fired the first gun of the war. Let it be reduced! On
every available point of land a Union battery was built. Far out in
the swamps back of the city, where it was thought no living thing save
reptiles could exist, the soldiers of the North had raised a battery,
mounting one two-hundred-pound gun. When a young lieutenant was
ordered to build this battery, he looked the ground over, and reported
the thing impossible. "There is no such word as impossible," sternly
answered the colonel. "Set to work, and call for whatever you need to
secure success."

[Illustration: Cutting out a Blockade-Runner.]

The next day the lieutenant, who was a bit of a wag, made a
requisition on the quarter-master for one hundred men eighteen feet
high, to wade through mud sixteen feet deep. Pleasantry is not
appreciated in war; and the officer was arrested, but soon secured his
release, and built the battery with men of ordinary height.

[Illustration: War-ships off Charleston Harbor.]

In April, 1862, Admiral Du Pont had lined his iron-clads and monitors
up before the beetling walls of Fort Sumter, and had hurled solid shot
for hours, with only the effect of breaking away sharp corners and
projecting edges of the fort, but leaving it still as powerful a work
of defence as ever. The little monitors exposed to the terrible fire
from the guns of Sumter were fairly riddled; and, when the signal was
finally made to withdraw from the action, the humblest sailor knew
that Charleston would only fall after a siege as protracted and
wearisome as that of Vicksburg.

The investment of Charleston lasted from the date of that first attack
upon Fort Sumter until 1865. From time to time the war-vessels would
throw a few shells into the city, as a reminder to the inhabitants
that they were under surveillance. Early in the siege the Swamp Angel,
as the big gun back in the swamp was called, began sending hourly
messages, in the form of two-hundred-pound shells, into the city. In
one quarter, where the shells fell thickest, a severe fire was
started, which raged fiercely, driving people from their homes, and
reducing whole blocks to ashes; while the deadly shells aided in the
work of destruction. But the l