Museum exhibit chronicles Civil War 'siege'

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- The towering steeple of Second Presbyterian Church was used by Union batteries to sight the guns that lobbed shells into Charleston during a 587-day Civil War siege.

And now in its building nearby, the Charleston Museum has mounted its first permanent exhibit of those days of war and deprivation.

Although technically not a siege -- the rail lines to the west still operated although tenuously toward war's end -- the Union blockade put a stranglehold on Charleston, which refused to surrender.

The new exhibit in the nation's oldest museum shows how the city weathered the conflict that opened with the Confederate bombardment on Fort Sumter in the harbor in 1861.

The fort surrendered after that opening battle. The Confederates occupied it and later found themselves in turn under siege from Union forces. Historians say the fort has been shelled more than any other site in the Western Hemisphere.

"It is to describe not the Civil War in general or the Civil War nationally but how it affected Charleston," said John Brumgardt, the museum's director. "It was pretty grim on the home front."

Grim meant drinking acorn coffee instead of the real stuff; setting up relief houses so passing soldiers could get a meal; rushing to the docks when a blockade runner managed to sneak through with a supply of clothing or sugar.

The exhibit includes the chairs from Institute Hall where delegates signed the Articles of Secession by which South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union.

Here, too, is a pair of wedding slippers, with a price tag of $100 Confederate, that likely would have cost only $5 before the war. Inflation was an ever-worsening problem in Charleston where residents dealt with the psychological stress of shells falling every day.

"A spool of thread that cost 5 cents at the beginning of the war might cost 80 cents by 1862 and over $1 by the end of the war," Brumgardt said.

The city was never overrun, but Confederate troops evacuated as Sherman's army advanced in 1865.

The exhibit also includes a spray of flowers that decorated the flag pole at Fort Sumter when the Union flag was raised again at war's end.

The Civil War was not the first time this coastal city was under siege; the British captured Charleston, then the nation's fourth- largest city, after a six-week Revolutionary War siege in 1780.

During the Civil War, city institutions closed and the collection from the museum, which was founded in 1773, was taken by the curator to Aiken for safekeeping.

"They were found by invading Union troops who thought they were worthless and left them alone, thankfully," Brumgardt said.

The display includes the uniform of a Confederate soldier who fell during the Battle of Secessionville, an unsuccessful 1863 Union attempt to breach Charleston's defenses. The jacket is stained with blood near a bullet hole.

Other items in the display were found after Hurricane Hugo smashed the coast in 1989, uncovering buried Union artifacts on Folly Beach.

Perhaps the most unusual artifact in the exhibit is a wooden hand made for Confederate Col. Peter Gaillard, later mayor of Charleston, whose left wrist and hand were shattered defending Battery Wagner on Morris Island in 1863. The battery was the scene of the attack by the black Union 54th Massachusetts regiment chronicled in the movie "Glory."

"Reportedly the hand was whittled by one of his own soldiers," said museum curator J. Grahame Long.

Below the index finger, the hand has a small flathead screw that apparently was used to attach a utensil such as a fork. Artificial hands and legs are rare, although thousands of wounded soldiers likely were fitted with them after the war. Most were likely used and worn out, Long said.

The museum has had temporary Civil War exhibits, but no permanent ones, in the past. Many people long associated Charleston with America's Colonial era.

Brumgardt said he wanted to see Civil War sites when he first visited Charleston 34 years ago but the only sites were Fort Sumter and what was then the display for the Confederate submarine Hunley. There is now substantial interest in both eras, he said.

The Hunley was the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship. A replica of the vessel, which now sits in a courtyard outside the museum, had been displayed in the basement of a building in the historic district when Brumgardt first visited.

The actual Hunley was raised from the Atlantic four years ago and eventually will go on display in a museum in North Charleston.

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