February 10, 1865---The Battle of Grimball's Causeway

FEBRUARY 10, 1865:       

The Battle of Grimball’s Causeway:

As Sherman’s wings spread their flaming shadows across the land of South Carolina, Union troops make what in the event is their last attempt to take Charleston, South Carolina by force in the Civil War.

Charleston is a ruin. The downtown, destroyed by fire in the early days of the war, has never been properly rebuilt, and the city as a whole has suffered intense bombardment by Yankee naval and land forces throughout the war.  

Shells fall in the city and its environs every day, and have since the summer of 1863. It is a city of wreckage, surviving a nineteenth century Blitz.  

The most heavily blockaded of Southern ports, Charleston has been effectively cut off from the rest of the South for years --- its overland supply route stretches across inhospitable swamps familiar only to the locals who have managed to drive back Union attempts to cut the city off utterly.

Not one ship has entered the harbor in years.

Blasted, battered, fire-blackened starving Charleston has held out through four years of war despite all odds, a city of people living on pride and grim resolve, convinced they will never be subjugated.

The real wrath most Northerners feel toward the Cradle of Secession is mixed with bitter frustration, another draught of which the Union must swallow today --- For, gall and wormwood, the unshakeable defenders of Charleston manage to drive off yet another ground assault.

Charleston, once more, holds on. 

The ruins of St. Finbar's Church, Charleston 1865