The siege of Fort Pulaski (or the siege and reduction of Fort Pulaski) concluded with the battle of Fort Pulaski fought April 10–11, 1862, during the American Civil War. Union forces on Tybee Island and naval operations conducted a 112-day siege, then captured the Confederate-held Fort Pulaski after a 30-hour bombardment. The siege and battle are important for innovative use of rifled guns which made existing coastal defenses obsolete. The Union initiated large-scale amphibious operations under fire.
The fort's surrender strategically closed Savannah as a port. The Union extended its blockade and aids to navigation down the Atlantic coast, then redeployed most of its 10,000 troops. The Confederate army-navy defense blocked Federal advance for over three months, secured the city, and prevented any subsequent Union advance from seaward during the war. Coastal rail connections were extended to blockaded Charleston, South Carolina.
Fort Pulaski is located on Cockspur Island, Georgia, near the mouth of the Savannah River. The fort commanded seaward approaches to the City of Savannah. The city was commercially and industrially important as a cotton exporting port, railroad center and the largest manufacturing center in the state, including a state arsenal and private shipyards. Two southerly estuaries led to the Savannah River behind the fort. Immediately east of Pulaski, and in sight of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, lay Tybee Island with a lighthouse station.
Background
Fort Pulaski was built as a "Third System" fort in the United States system of coastal defense on land ceded to the United States by the State of Georgia. Authorized by appropriations begun by Congress under the James Madison administration, construction of Third System forts was directed under U.S. Secretaries of War including James Monroe of Virginia, William H. Crawford of Georgia, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.
The new construction replaced two earlier forts on Tybee Island. A British colonial fort was torn down in the American Revolution. The first U.S. fort, authorized in the Washington Administration, was swept away in an 1804 hurricane. Construction began on Fort Pulaski during 1830, and was completed in 1845 in the administration of John Tyler by a successor of U.S. Secretary of War John Bell of Tennessee. The new fort was named to honor Casimir Pulaski, the Polish hero of the American Revolution.
The Third System fort expanded Savannah's defenses downriver from "Old" Fort Jackson, a "Second System" fort which had been built nearby the city to defend the immediate approaches to its wharves. In the campaigns for national elections in 1860, Southerners threatened to secede from the United States if Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Following the policy of President James Buchanan and his Secretary of War John B. Floyd of Virginia, the newly inaugurated Lincoln Administration at first did not garrison and defend forts, arsenals or U.S. Treasury Mints in the South. The policy was continued until April 12, 1861, when South Carolina militia bombarded Fort Sumter, South Carolina, just north along the Atlantic Coast from Fort Pulaski.
"Department of Georgia"
On January 3, 1861, 16 days before the secession of Georgia from the Union, volunteer militia seized Fort Pulaski from the Federal government and, with Confederate forces, began repairing and upgrading the armament. In late 1861, the commander, Department of Georgia, Brigadier General Alexander Robert Lawton would transfer to Richmond. On November 5, General Robert E. Lee assumed command of the newly created "Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida", headquartering in Savannah. He had helped construct the fort in his early military career and was familiar with the terrain and tides.
Lawton's October report for his department listed 2,753 men and officers in the environs of Savannah, almost half of the command. First Georgia Regulars had been assigned to Tybee Island. They built a battery on Tybee Island and manned it, along with lookouts along the beach. The Regiment was reassigned to Virginia, departing July 17, 1861. Olmstead's "First Volunteer Regiment of Georgia" would garrison Fort Pulaski through the Federal siege.
Fort Pulaski was considered invincible with its 7-1/2-foot solid brick walls and reinforcing masonry piers. Lee had earlier surveyed the fort's defenses with Colonel Olmstead and determined, "they will make it pretty warm for you here with shells, but they cannot breach your walls at that distance." Wide swampy marshes surrounded the fort on all sides and were infested with native alligators. No attacking ship could safely come within effective range, and land batteries could not be placed closer than Tybee Island, one to two miles away. Beyond 700 yards (640 meters), smoothbore guns and mortars had little chance to break through heavy masonry walls. Beyond 1,000 yards (910 m), they had no chance at all. Prior to the war, the U.S. Chief of Engineers, Colonel Joseph Gilbert Totten is quoted as saying of the fort, "you might as well bombard the Rocky Mountains." If there were ever to be a successful siege, it would have to starve the garrison into submission.
Defense in depth
When Federal forces first made a lodgment on Tybee Island, the work on Fort Pulaski was progressing slowly, but Lee's judgment as the district's commanding general was that "the river cannot be forced". Old Fort Jackson had been armed, strengthened and "forms an interior barrier". Savannah's channel had been blocked. In December, Lee reasoned that, since the Federals had sunk a stone fleet in the Charleston Harbor, they did not intend to use it. "We must endeavor to be prepared against assaults elsewhere on the Southern coast." To that end, ships were sunk by the Confederates in the water approaches that led behind Fort Pulaski.
Lee brought Commodore Josiah Tattnall from a James River command and would employ sailors to service at a battery across from Savannah's Fort Jackson. Turning his attention to Fort Pulaski's defenses, Lee anticipated Union moves to establish batteries above the fort. He ordered guns positioned to cover their likely positions were the Federals to get behind Pulaski in a siege attempt.
In January, following Tattnall's three-gunboat attack on seven Federal gunboats on the river, Lee's assessment was that "there is nothing to prevent their reaching the Savannah River, and we have nothing afloat that can contend against them."
Fort Pulaski, a "Third System", scientifically engineered coastal defense fort, still had at least four months' provisions. Now, the primary objective became, "we must endeavor to defend the city." The city's floating dock was sunk as another river obstruction.
In March, Lee passed along War Department orders to begin transferring regiments from Florida to Tennessee to reinstate operations following the "disasters to our arms" there. Georgian troops had been sent to Virginia in July, additional Georgians would be moved to Tennessee also. The Confederate government required a withdrawal from seaboard forces into the interior of South Carolina and Georgia to better secure the breadbasket plantations feeding the armies. In Florida, only the Apalachicola River had to be defended at all costs because Federal gunboats could penetrate so deeply into the Georgia interior.
On Lee's transfer to Richmond, he detailed urgent defense construction, then he called on Lawton's "earnest and close attention" to the Federal's probable approach to the city. "It looks now as if he would take the Savannah River". Guns located in island batteries were to be removed to the mainland in and around Savannah's defensive lines. Obstructions in the river above the city were to be set by hands provided by upriver planters in the event of an envelopment by way of Fort McAllister. "Every effort must be made" to retard or prevent further progress of the enemy directly upriver on the Savannah River approaches. "If he attempts to advance by batteries on the marshes or islands, he must be driven back, if possible." Scouts were ordered out "so as to discover his first lodgment, when they can be broken up." An additional three-gun battery at MacKay's Point was not intended to stop federal gunboats in force, but with Tattnall's gunboat support, they could prevent Federal batteries from being built on Elba Island to threaten Old Fort Jackson.
Savannah's existing Fort Jackson, about three miles downriver from the city, was supplemented with two additional batteries. Defenders built fire barges. Lee first placed a battery at Causton's Bluff commanding navigable estuaries leading to the Savannah River behind Fort Pulaski. Then he added another battery situated farther upriver on Elba Island, blocking all river approaches to Savannah. The Union naval commander, Flag Officer Samuel F. Du Pont, conducted a reconnaissance of Lee's system of defense upriver. When the commanding military general, Brigadier General Thomas W. Sherman, insisted on forcing Lee's riverine batteries against Du Pont's recommendation, Sherman was transferred to the western theater and replaced by Major General David Hunter.
The Union fleet conducted explorations among the Atlantic inlets and coastal marshes by shallow draft ships, boats and monitors. But when they came up against earthworks such as Fort McAllister just south of Savannah, their efforts using bombardment alone were fruitless.
At the time Pulaski was cut off from Savannah in April 1862, the garrison under the command of Colonel Charles H. Olmstead had been reduced from 650 to 385 officers and men. They were organized into five infantry companies and had 48 cannons, including ten columbiads, five mortars, and a 4.5-inch (114 mm) Blakely rifle. The Confederate Tybee Island battery had been previously dismantled and abandoned, and their guns relocated to the fort. The fort had been provisioned on January 28 with a six-month supply of food.
In consultation with Lee, Olmstead had distributed armament on the ramparts and in the casements to cover all approaches, and several were placed to cover westerly marshes and Savannah's North Channel. Confederate marauders burned sea island cotton crops to deny them falling into Federal hands. Navigational aids like the Tybee Lighthouse were dismantled and burned. Reports from the field had Confederate troops setting fires to everything that might be used by advancing Federal troops.
In August 1861, the Union secretary of war, Simon Cameron, authorized a combined army and navy expeditionary corps. Sherman commanded the army elements, and Flag Officer Samuel Du Pont commanded the naval services. The objectives were: to recapture Fort Pulaski as federal property; to close the port of Savannah to the rebels; and, to extend the blockade southward. First they needed a coaling station for the South Atlantic Squadron. The coaling station could then serve as a base for the expedition. The capture of Port Royal harbor answered the immediate requirement for a nearby staging area.
Federal advance
After building up facilities on Hilton Head Island, the Federals began preparations for besieging Fort Pulaski.
The Union advance on Fort Pulaski began on November 24, 1861. Following reconnaissance that Confederates had abandoned Tybee Island, Du Pont ordered forward an amphibious raid with three gunboats at the Tybee Island Lighthouse. Under a two-hour ship's bombardment, the Confederate pickets set fire to the lighthouse and withdrew. Commander Christopher Rodgers, USS Flag, led a landing party of sailors and Marines in thirteen surf-boats to occupy the lighthouse and the Martello tower, and flew the national flag from them. Overnight, a reduced company set false campfires to misdirect the Confederates ashore. Two days later Du Pont and Sherman made a personal reconnaissance, and on 29 November, Major General Quincy Adams Gillmore, the command's chief engineering officer, with three companies of the Fourth New Hampshire, took formal possession of the entire island without opposition. The navy set the logistics train in motion, and by December 20, the army had sufficient materials for establishing "a permanent possession".
The last blockade runner to make Savannah was the British steam ship Fingal. Its cargo of arms and munitions reached the entrance to Wassaw Sound at the mouth of the Savannah River on a clear night in mid November, but heavy fog in the early morning masked the ship's progress across the bar and upriver. Later, she made two unsuccessful attempts at escaping the blockade before being converted into an ironclad. Pulaski's share on ship's manifest was two 24-pounder Blakely rifles and a large consignment of British-made Enfield infantry rifles. As Du Pont sought to close the alternative channels local ships used, he sank stone-filled ships in the Savannah River channel, and stationed gunboats at two southerly estuaries, Wassaw Sound, south of Wilmington Island, and Ossabaw Sound at Skidaway Island.