Fort Sumter, March 1864, interior of east battery, with palmetto shield

Fort Sumter, March 1864, interior of east battery, with palmetto shield, 18.5x12.5cm From a photo Fort Sumter as it was during the War, showing the effects of the bombardment by Maj. John Johnson, Engineer at Fort Sumter Publisher: Walker, Evans & Cogswell Co.,Charleston, S.C. Compliments of J. F. Weruer, Sullivans Island, S.C. Sergent Charles E. Walker, Battery M. 1 artillery, Sullevans Island, South Carlina Period of the greatest ruin. To obtain a cross-fire from Fort Sumter with the works on Sullivan\u27s Island, Fort Moultrie and others, three guns were mounted as described in the lowere casemates of Sumter near the eastern angle; but the outer wall having been much shaken and weakened by the naval fire of the attack, resort was had to a crib-work of logs (palmetto) projecting ten feet outside of the wall, filled with debris, and pierced with embrasures for short range firing upon the main channel. Had the armored vessels ever attempted to run past into the harbor, these guns behind their cracked brick wall, strengthened by a palmetto shield, might have done some service; as it happened they were never called into action. The upright irons placed along the water\u27s edge of the sea-front, served the two-fold purpose of retaining other horizontally laid irons for a footing to the slope of tide and storm-washed debris, and of carrying strong iron wires from post to post, in the way of obstruction and entanglement. Evidence of the great loss of material to the fort is shown in the large blocks of masonry fallen from about to the water\u27s edge.https://mds.marshall.edu/cabell_wayne_hist_soc_collection/1657/thumbnail.jp