page_title: First Battle of Charleston Harbor
section_title: Confederacy
hierarchical_section_title: First Battle of Charleston Harbor / Background / Confederacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Confederate artillery at Charleston Harbor
context_page_description: The First Battle of Charleston Harbor was an engagement near Charleston, South Carolina that took place April 7, 1863, during the American Civil War. The striking force was a fleet of nine ironclad warships of the Union Navy, including seven monitors that were improved versions of the original USS Monitor. A Union Army contingent associated with the attack took no active part in the battle. The ships, under command of Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, attacked the Confederate defenses near the entrance to Charleston Harbor. Navy Department officials in Washington hoped for a stunning success that would validate a new form of warfare, with armored warships mounting heavy guns reducing traditional forts.
  Du Pont had been given seven of the Passaic class monitors, the powerful New Ironsides, and the experimental ironclad Keokuk. Other naval operations were sidetracked as their resources were diverted to the attack on Charleston. After a long period of preparation, conditions of tide and visibility allowed the attack to proceed. The slow monitors got into position rather late in the afternoon, and when the tide turned, Du Pont had to suspend the operation.
context_section_description: General P. G. T. Beauregard commanded the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. As he had led the rebel forces at Charleston at the time of the bombardment of Fort Sumter that opened the war, he was intimately familiar with the fortifications surrounding the city. He had been called away to service elsewhere, but returned in September 1862. The batteries that had been set up under his supervision to assault the fort were incorporated into the harbor defenses. His successors, Major General John C. Pemberton and Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley, made some additions in the year and a half that he was gone, but the basic features were due to Beauregard.
  
  The fortifications that had been set up around the harbor were well-suited to repel attacks from the ocean. The most seaward guns were placed in Battery Wagner (often referred to in Union accounts as Fort Wagner) and Battery Gregg, both on Morris Island. Near them, on a man-made island on the same side of the harbor, was Fort Sumter. Fort Moultrie and its outlying batteries lay across the harbor on Sullivan's Island. These formed the first or outer defensive ring. A second ring consisted of Fort Johnson and Battery Glover on James Island, and Fort Ripley and Castle Pinckney in the harbor, and finally the White Point Battery (Battery Ramsay) at the southern end of the city itself. A third ring, formed of several batteries on the Cooper and Ashley Rivers and in Charleston, was intended to protect against land assault on the city. In all, they mounted some 385 land-based guns. 
  The defense also included shipping barriers spanning the harbor. First to be put in place was a row of piles that stretched from Fort Johnson to near Fort Ripley in the Middle Ground. This proved to be ineffective, as storms and strong tides soon ripped out major sections. Later, a "boom" was laid between Forts Sumter and Moultrie. Formed of 20-foot (6.1 m) lengths of railroad iron floated by large timbers, bound together by chains, and anchored at intervals, this barrier also broke under the strain imposed by the tides. It was supplemented by a rope obstruction that was meant to foul the propellers of enemy vessels. Despite the effort that went into these barriers, the defenders did not believe them to be serious impediments to an invading fleet. The same was true of most of the torpedoes (present-day mines) that were laid. Du Pont was unaware of their flaws, so the barriers and torpedoes were major concerns in his preparations for the battle.
  The South also had a naval contingent present. Two armored gunboats, CSS Chicora and Palmetto State, were ready to fight if the invaders neared the city. They would be used only reluctantly, as they were known to be too slow to pose a significant threat to the Northern monitors.
  The defenses before Charleston were strong, but Beauregard knew that he had to prepare for the worst. Thus, shortly after he resumed his command, he made the potentially fateful decision to defend the city street by street if necessary. He wrote to Governor Francis W. Pickens to state his position: "As I understand it is the wish of all, people and government, that the city shall be defended to the last extremity."
caption: Confederate artillery at Charleston Harbor
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