**Battery Halleck**

(ref. Anderson 1990)

Although eleven Union gun emplacements fired on Fort Pulaski from Big
Tybee Island during the April 1862 bombardment, none were known to have
survived the more than a century of land development that has occurred
since the battle. In the late 1980s, however, inspection of maps by
National Park Service (NPS) personnel assigned to Fort Pulaski National
Monument led to the suggestion that the remains of Battery Halleck,
which had been placed in marshlands well away from areas built up in
modern times, might still be present. If this was the case, the remains
of the battery might be relatively undisturbed. As such, they might be
worthy of acquisition and preservation by the NPS and, eventually, be
restored for public visitation and interpretation. 

Determining whether or not Battery Halleck had survived was thus
considered a high priority by NPS personnel at Fort Pulaski. The
importance of this particular battery was highlighted by the fact that a
shot fired from the right (east) mortar, touched off at 8:15 a.m. on the
morning of April 10, 1862, was the signal for all the Union guns to
begin operations against Fort Pulaski. The assault continued for a day
and a half until the fort surrendered. The rapid reduction of Fort
Pulaski―a masonry fort of a type previously thought to be largely
invulnerable―dramatically demonstrated the effectiveness of rifled
cannon in sieges and the need to rethink methods for both reducing and
defending fortifications.

During the summer and fall of 1990, archaeological investigations were
undertaken on a low sandy spit, or hammock, located in tidal marshlands
on Big Tybee Island in an area about one mile southeast of Fort Pulaski
National Monument. The fieldwork was conducted in an effort to locate
Battery Halleck, a Union mortar battery that had been built somewhere in
this area during the siege and reduction of Fort Pulaski, which in early
1862 was held by Confederate forces. Battery Halleck appears on detailed
maps of the period that show the disposition of forces at the time of
the battle

The fieldwork included surface reconnaissance coupled with limited
shovel testing and metal detector work. A series of earthen depressions
were found that closely correspond to Civil War period descriptions of
the kind of Union mortar batteries erected during the siege and
reduction of Fort Pulaski. Unfortunately, no artifacts of the
appropriate period were found, and, since the area was densely
overgrown, only limited observations about surface and subsurface
conditions and features could be made during this brief visit.

An intensive testing program included the detailed topographic mapping
of the hammock, the visual inspection of its entire surface area, and
the excavation of 11 one-meter test units in three areas of the
landform. The fieldwork documented the existence of four large, roughly
circular depressions in the central part of the hammock. Testing in
three of these depressions indicated each had been created by extensive
human activity some time prior to the mid- twentieth century-an effort
consistent with that described for the Civil War period mortar battery
we were looking for. The size and relative placement of these
depressions, and their occurrence in an extensively disturbed and
built-up portion of the hammock, furthermore, provided a set of features
that closely corresponded to Civil War period descriptions of mortar
batteries. The four depressions were, accordingly, interpreted in the
field and subsequently in the laboratory as corresponding to the east
(right) mortar battery, the central powder magazine and an associated
antechamber, and the west (left) battery of a two-mortar battery. The
only emplacement known to have been in this area was Battery Halleck,
constructed in 1862. 

Although no diagnostic Civil War period artifacts were found during the
September 1990 testing, the overall evidence―specifically the occurrence
of extensive, pre-mid-twentieth-century earth movement on the hammock,
resulting in a disposition of features identical to that expected from a
Civil War mortar emplacement―leads to the inescapable conclusion that
the site is, indeed, that of Battery Halleck. Acquisition and
interpretation of this property by the NPS would ensure its preservation
and offer park visitors the opportunity to view a gun emplacement
operated by the Union forces in the 1862 battle. Since all of the other
Union gun emplacements that took part in the battle have apparently been
destroyed by development (although formal archaeological survey activity
to verify this assumption is recommended), and since the features making
up the battery are in a remarkable state of preservation, its
preservation should be of the highest priority. 

Possibilities for Public Interpretation: one or two wayside exhibits
along trail, brochure (on site and/or VC?), other?