After years of wondering about a great uncle who played a tragic role in the history of America, Willard Parker Hough took a trip to South Carolina to find out what happened to his Irish heir. The Stony Brook man’s travels took him to Fort Sumter, where an attack by the newly formed Confederacy started the Civil War. It was there that the heartbreaking story of Artilleryman Daniel Hough began to unfold.
To win citizenship in his new country, Hough entered the Union Army as a private and became part of the 1st U.S. Artillery. He fell under the command of Major Robert Anderson, who was keenly aware of the rumblings of succession among the citizens of Charleston. Stationed with 85 men at Fort Moultrie, the Major realized his position was indefensible, so on the day after Christmas in 1860, he regarrisoned his company to the more robust Fort Sumter.
Following the War of 1812 with Britain, President Andrew Jackson realized the need to strengthen the new nation’s coastal defenses, especially to protect the Atlantic entrance to Charleston, the south’s busiest port. Millions of tons of Massachusetts granite created an island at the confluence of the Ashley and the Cooper rivers where none had been before. Bricks made by slaves in Charleston kilns were stacked 50 feet high and eight feet thick to repel the assaults of any belligerent ships. It was named for General Thomas Sumter, a southern hero of the Revolutionary War.
Anderson’s move to Sumter infuriated the Confederates, and they sent a demand to President James Buchannan to evacuate. He refused. A federal ship sent with provisions was turned away by shore batteries now surrounding the island. When Abraham Lincoln took office a few months later, he ordered Anderson to hold the fort. His Confederate counterpart was General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, commander of the militia at Charleston who, as history would have it, studied under Anderson at West Point. He was ordered to compel his former teacher to abandon Sumter. Anderson declined, telling him, “You have your orders; l have mine.”
At 3:20 a.m. on April 12, 1861, the Confederates warned they would open fire in one hour. Anderson held firm. At 10 minutes past the allotted time, Captain George S. James, commanding a battery east of Sumter, ordered the firing of a single shell, which illuminated the skies over the fort and initiated a barrage that would nearly level the installation. Major Anderson returned fire, but by noon, only six of his 60 guns remained in action. The citizens of Charleston, roused from their beds by the bombardment, watched in shock and awe.
“The firing of the mortar woke the echoes from every nook and corner of the harbor,” noted a report. “That shot was a sound of alarm that brought every soldier in the harbor to his feet and every man, woman, and child in the city of Charleston from their beds. A thrill went through the whole city. It was felt that the Rubicon was passed.” Civil war, long dreaded, had begun, leaving a diarist to note: “Some of the anxious hearts lie on their beds and moan in solitary misery wrestling with the uncertainty of what the war would bring.”
More than 3,000 shells, an incessant fusillade of 10-inch columbiads, mortars, and 400-pounders, bombarded the fort over the next 34 hours. A hot shot from Fort Moultrie, now in the hands of the Confederates, set fire to the officer’s quarters. Flames surrounded the magazines; the fort’s flagstaff was shot away. Major Anderson signaled that he had enough. A proud soldier, he would not concede a surrender, that his action was an evacuation, and Beauregard, not welcoming the prospect of further assaulting his former instructor and friend, agreed and let his men leave peacefully. Miraculously, none of them were killed in the bombardment that started the war that tore apart the nation.
Stepping off the ferry from Patriots Point, Parker Hough, joined by his wife Sandra Sprowes, a dean at Suffolk Community College, is greeted by a ranger with the National Park Service. They walk toward the fort and he takes in the destruction. The once proud bastion had been reduced to a single level of pock-marked brick. Inside, he sees the massive cannons still on the tracks the artillerymen used to aim them. There is a flag flying with 33 stars of statehood, the totality of America at the time of the war. The ranger points out iron projectiles protruding from walls they could not penetrate. His attention is drawn to a brick with a set of fingerprints made when a slave child turned it to dry so long ago. The ranger said the captive worker could not have been more than eight.
At a quiet spot away from the tourist crowd, the ancestor asks about Private Daniel Hough. The ranger’s eyes alight. The terms of Major Anderson’s evacuation included the safe passage of his men out of Charleston with their belongings intact. And there was one more thing: The dispossession would be heralded by a 100-gun salute by the fort’s remaining guns. Beauregard acceded to his former mentor’s wishes.
As Private Hough prepared his cannon for the 47th round of the epic salute, something went wrong. The weapon exploded and he was killed instantly, the first casualty of the War Between the States. Among the last boat of sightseers that afternoon, the Long Islander was asked to stay behind. He was escorted to the eastern rampart, to the majestic flag that stated the Union’s dominion over Fort Sumter, and was asked to proudly lower it for the day.