A little episode occurred one day that created quite a panic among both prisoners and guards. Suddenly and without warning, a large solid shot came rolling and tumbling through camp, from the north; this was followed by another, and then another. This was getting serious. What the Dickens was the matter? Where did these shots come from? were questions that any and all of us, could and did ask, but none could answer. But in this case, the rebel guard and officers, were in danger as well as Yanks, and a courier was dispatched in hot haste to inquire into the why and wherefore. It turned out that a rebel gunboat, on the Cooper River, was practicing at a target and we were getting the benefit of it.
Here at Charleston we were on historic ground. Just a few miles to the east of us Colonel Moultrie defended a palmetto fort manned by five hundred brave and loyal South Carolinans, against the combined land and naval forces of Sir Henry Clinton, and Sir Peter Parker, on the 28th of June 1776, and with his twenty-six cannons compelled the fleet to retire. There upon the palmetto bastion of old Fort Moultrie, the brave young Sergeant Jasper supported the Stars and Stripes under a terrible fire, and earned for himself an undying fame. Here and in this vicinity, Moultrie, Pickens, Pinckney, Lee, Green, Lincoln and Marion earned a reputation which will last as long as American history shall endure. But, alas, here too, is material for a history which does not reflect much credit on the descendants of those brave and loyal men. South Carolina was the first State to adopt an ordinance of Secession, Nov 20th, 1860.
Here in Charleston Harbor, on the 9th of January 1861, the descendants of those revolutionary heroes, from the embrazures of fort Moultrie, and Castle Pinckney, fired upon the Star of the West, a United States vessel sent with supplies for the brave Anderson, who was cooped up within the walls of Fort Sumter. From these same forts, on the 12th of April, was fired the guns which compelled the surrender of Fort Sumter, and was the beginning of hostilities in the War of the Rebellion. And all this trouble had grown out of a political doctrine promulgated by an eminent South Carolinan, John C. Calhoun.