Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[371] second parallel were obliged to train their guns on Fort Wagner, so as to interrupt its fire when it became too sharp and uncomfortable. They had equally to suffer from that of the pieces posted on James Island, to which they could not respond. The ‘Swamp Angel’ added for a while its voice to this formidable concert. This piece being in battery on the 20th, Gillmore sent a summons to Beauregard, and threatened to bombard the city of Charleston itself if he did not evacuate Fort Sumter. After a delay of a few hours only, which Beauregard with reason found to be derisive, the bombardment so impatiently waited for at the North, especially by those who prated about the war without incurring its dangers, commenced on the morning of the 21st. The inhabitants of Charleston were soon reassured. The one piece trained on their city hardly succeeded in throwing into it a few shells, which did no damage, notwithstanding the pretended Greek fire with which they were loaded. On the ensuing day it burst at the thirty-sixth round, and Gillmore, satisfied with the demonstration which he had been obliged to make, did not replace the piece. Its fragments perhaps still lie to-day on the little hill created with so much trouble in the midst of moving ground, silent witnesses to the art employed by men to destroy one another, and over which the whippoorwill, the bird of the swamps, never tires of repeating its solitary plaint.

By way of retaliation, the success of the firing on Fort Sumter was complete. The official reports concur on this point in a remarkable manner. It was marked with rare precision, despite the distance of 3250 to 4333 yards. According to Gillmore, leaving out of the account two pieces placed no doubt at too great a distance, twelve Parrott guns fired 4225 shots: their projectiles weighed together 552,683 pounds. Out of this number, 4147 are said to have hit the work. Beauregard, counting all the shots fired against Sumter by the land-batteries and the fleet, reaches the the total figure of 5643, of which 4342 hit the fort and 1301 struck wide of the mark. All of Sumter's cannon were dismantled in succession; the garrison, which had taken refuge in the portions still intact of the casemates, gave up serving the guns from the second day. The work itself was completely ruined: the barbette batteries were destroyed; the masonry facing the