Booknotes: Holding Charleston by the Bridle

New Arrival:

• Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War by W. Clifford Roberts, Jr. & Matthew A.M. Locke (Savas Beatie, 2024).

Two of Charleston harbor's main forts have received full history treatments from publisher Savas Beatie this year. First there was the February release of Richard Hatcher's Thunder in the Harbor: Fort Sumter and the Civil War and just months later we now get W. Clifford Roberts and Matthew Locke's Holding Charleston by the Bridle: Castle Pinckney and the Civil War. A Third System fort that was still incomplete by the outbreak of the Civil War, Sumter guarded the outer harbor's channel entrances while the older Second System's Castle Pinckney was finished before the War of 1812 and more closely covered the inner harbor and the city itself.

From the description: "On the eve of the Civil War, the London Times informed its readers that Castle Pinckney has “been kept garrisoned, not to protect Charleston from naval attack from the ocean, but to serve as a bridle upon the city.” Located on a marshy island in the center of Charleston’s magnificent harbor, the large cannons on the ramparts of this horseshoe-shaped masonry fort had the ability to command downtown Charleston and the busy wharves along East Bay Street. This inescapable fact made Pinckney an important chess piece in the secession turmoil of 1832 and 1850, and in the months leading up to the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter."

Roberts and Locke's study is the first to comprehensively address the fort's entire history from its "innovative design as part of America’s “Second System” of coastal fortifications to the modern challenges of preserving its weathered brick walls against rising sea levels." Castle Pinckney's long active history encompassed numerous events between its construction and the Civil War period. Indeed, "defending the fort was one of Winfield Scott’s major concerns during the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Seminole Indians and Africans from the illegal slave ship Echo were held there" as well.

Of course, the Civil War years, during which the fort served as both seacoast artillery platform and prison, are a major focus of the book's content. More: "In 1860, Maj. Robert Anderson knew Pinckney was the key to protecting his small Federal garrison at Fort Moultrie, but his requests to Washington for troops to hold it went unheeded. That December, three companies of Charleston militia scaled Pinckney’s walls and seized the fort in a daring act that pushed the nation to the edge of civil war. After First Manassas (Bull Run), 156 captured Yankee officers and enlisted men were sent to the island, and in 1863, members of the famous 54th Massachusetts were held there as POWs. The fort’s guns helped defend Charleston during the war’s longest siege. By 1865, the old fortress had been transformed into an earthen barbette battery with a Brooke Rifle and three giant 10-inch Columbiads." Former Confederates were also held as prisoners within Pinckney's walls during Reconstruction, and it was a lighthouse depot for forty years more.

The volume is enhanced through a large collection of maps, drawings, photographs, and artwork. Numerous rosters of prisoners held at Castle Pinckney and of units defending the fort can be found in the appendix section, which also contains other relevant documentary supplements.