Fort Construction and
the Civil War
Fort
Construction
Following a quarter century of relative abandonment from 1804 to 1829, Cockspur Island was picked as the location for a new generation of fort. The War of 1812 helped to illustrate the ineffectiveness of the United States coastal defense system of the time. With this realization, President James Madison commissioned French military engineer General Simon Bernard to design a new network of fortifications on the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific coasts. Initial plans called for almost 200 new forts to be built, but by the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 only 30 of these were completed. Fort Pulaski was one of these forts (Click here for more information about the Third System of American Coastal Defense).
Selected Forts of the Third System of United States Coastal Defense |
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Top Row (Left to Right): Fort
Pulaski, Cockspur Island, Georgia; Fort Jackson, Savannah,
Georgia; Fort Sumter, Sullivan's Island, Georgia. |
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The original design of Fort Pulaski was completed in 1827,
with finalized plans finished in 1831. Construction on Cockspur Island
began in 1829 under the supervision of Major Samuel Babcock of the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. Due to his failing health, most of the work
from 
1829
to 1831 was supervised by Lieutenant Robert E. Lee. Lee's work focused
on the main drainage system, the dike system, the main north pier, and
the wood frame buildings used by the laborers. Following Babcock's death
and Lee's reassignment in 1831, Lieutenant Joseph K.F. Mansfield took
over as supervisor for the construction of Fort Pulaski (see 1860s Civil
War era photo at right). Mansfield expanded the area of the construction
village, and basically completed the construction of the actual fort
by 1847.
The main body of labor during the years 1829 to 1841 consisted mostly of enslaved Africans rented from nearby plantations. However, the final years of the fort's construction (1841-1847) saw the need for skilled labor with experience digging in the blue clays found on Cockspur Island. This group included both African-American and European-American laborers, all of whom would have had extensive experience working with these soils. These skilled laborers would have been part of the crew that dug the area of the pilings on which Fort Pulaski sat.
The Construction Village
There are still many remnants of the construction of Fort
Pulaski throughout Cockspur Island. Numerous circular brick structures,
or cisterns, can be seen, some with 
associated
square brickworks. These brick features are not well understood, although
it is thought that most of them date to this period of Fort Pulaski's
construction, and are, therefore, related to the construction village.
Much of the archeology concerned with Fort Pulaski National Monument
has focused on cataloging and mapping these features, but only limited
digging has actually occurred in the areas around them. Future research
would focus on their relation to underlying features and artifacts that
have not yet been exposed.
Based on maps done by Lieutenant Lee in 1830 and Lieutenant Mansfield in 1831, the locations of many of the buildings in the construction village are well-documented. The village consisted of three laborers quarters, a bakehouse, a mechanics boarding house (storm house), master workmans (mechanic's) quarters, superintending engineers quarters, an office, assistant engineering quarters, a blacksmith shop, a stable, a customs/boatmens house, and various associated cisterns. All of the actual wooden structures were destroyed by hurricanes that occurred in 1854, 1881, and 1893, leaving only solid brick structures behind.
Limited
excavations occurred at 2 of the square brick structures during the
1999 field season at Fort Pulaski National Monument. Three shovel tests
at the brickwork located northeast of the fort (see picture at left)
yielded various artifacts including coal, cinders, metal fragments,
wooden planks with iron and copper nails, and brick fragments. This
feature is thought to represent a fireplace or 
oven.
A circular cistern is located nearby (see above right picture). Testing
at the other square brickwork located northwest of the fort contained
brick and mortar rubble, oyster shell, mammal and fish bones, nails
and other metal fragments, glass, and historic ceramics. The dating
of the ceramics placed them during the period of Fort Pulaski's construction
(1829 to 1847). A 1934 map of Cockspur Island identified this square
brickwork as a stove, and the 1999 investigations supported this interpretation
by labeling it as either a stove or fireplace associated with the mechanics
building.
Following investigations of the brickworks, Southeast
Archeological Center archeologists digitized the 1831 Mansfield map,
and tied it into actual coordinates on an United States 
Geological
Survey map. The locations of the cisterns and square brickworks
were recorded using a Global Positioning System (GPS). These
locations were then plotted on the maps to test how accurate the Mansfield
map was. The results showed that the 1831 Mansfield map was very close
to the actual locations of the cisterns and brickworks. Because of this,
the crew then decided to try and locate the blacksmith shop and the
bakehouse using the Mansfield map. The area of the blacksmith shop turned
out to be under a section of the dike system constructed during the
1930s. Excavations at the supposed site of the bakehouse did not reveal
any features, but they did show that a large amount of dredge fill was
added to this area of the construction village.
Part of the problem with conducting a full-scale excavation and testing of the construction village areas is that much of it is buried under several feet of dredge spoil from the Savannah River. Army Corps of Engineers projects to deepen the north channel of the river led to the placement of the dredged materials on the north shore of Cockspur Island during the latter half of the 20th century. This thick layer of dredged material serves as both a hindrance to excavation and as protection for the site.
Archeology of the Feeder Canal and Dike System
While little archeological work occurred in the construction village, there was archeology done at both the feeder canal and dike system. In 1995, a Civil War era refuse area was disturbed by a Chatham County Mosquito Control worker while cleaning out an existing mosquito control ditch located west of the feeder canal. Work was halted until the site could be evaluated by archeologists as per the Section 106 compliance requirement. Archeologists from the Southeast Archeological Center were sent to investigate the extent of the damage. During their excavations, the archeologists identified the Civil War era refuse area containing brick fragments, complete glass bottles, and other Civil War period items. The archeologists concluded that these materials were probably associated with the post-April 1862 Union occupation of Fort Pulaski. Little information was gathered about the construction of the feeder canal or its relation to the overall construction of Fort Pulaski.
In June of 1997, Southeast Archeological Center archeologists returned to Fort Pulaski to conduct investigations of the dikes. Two areas were picked for digging based on the assumption that neither was disturbed by past repairs made by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s or later work by Fort Pulaski maintenance staff. The hope was to identify the original size and shape of the dikes built by Lieutenant Robert E. Lee. Work needed to be done before further repairs were made to the dike system to prepare for the impending hurricane season. One trench was cut into each of the two locations, thereby revealing the layering of soils, or stratigraphy, used to build up the dikes (Click here for a map of the Location of the Dike Investigations). When investigations were complete, it was learned that both locations had been disturbed in the past. The area of Trench 1 revealed evidence of repair during the 1930s using dredged mud from the moat. Trench 2 showed restorations that were probably made by Fort Pulaski maintenance crews sometime in the last 50 years.
During
the excavation, three artifacts were located, recorded, and returned
to their original location. Trench 1 yielded 2 rose-brown brick fragments,
and Trench 2 contained a replica .58 caliber minié ball
(see picture at right). Minié balls were a bullet type developed
during the 1840s that were used heavily during the Civil War. This replica
is probably from the firing of black powder rifles by Civil War enthusiasts
during the 1960s.
The
Siege of Fort Pulaski
With the secession of Georgia from the United States,
the Confederate Congress of the state saw a need to establish control
over their coastal defenses before the arrival of Union occupying forces.
To do so, they needed to capture the fortifications located on the Atlantic
seaboard. On January 3, 1861, a Confederate force of 134 men easily
overran Fort Pulaski, which was 
virtually
abandoned at the time. The Confederacy would hold this position for
more than a year.
During this time, Union leaders saw the need for recapturing fortifications such as Fort Sumter and Fort Pulaski if their naval blockade of southern ports was to be successful. Throughout the early months of 1862, Union forces secretly began building a host of batteries on Tybee, Bird, and Jones Islands to achieve this goal. A Union gun boat also patrolled Lazaretto Creek (Click for a Map of the Battery Locations - 47 KB).
Batteries were constructed on Tybee, but there were no
batteries on McQueens Island.
At 8:15 am on April 10, 1862, the batteries opened fire
on Fort Pulaski and the Confederate contingent within. Within 30 hours
a breach was made, and the troops within the fort surrendered. The secret
to the siege was the use of rifled
cannons by the 
Union
artillery. These new weapons were able to fire their elongated projectiles
farther and more accurately than the smoothbore cannons that Fort Pulaski
was built to withstand. This one event transformed all the masonry forts
built as a part of the Third System of United States Coastal Defense
from impenetrable bastions of ingenious engineering to obsolete symbols
of American paranoia and excess.
Archeology related to the bombardment of Fort Pulaski
is completely derived from 1990 excavations at one of the batteries
on Tybee Island. While the property on which Battery Halleck
is located is not physically a part of Fort 
Pulaski
National Monument, an agreement was reached between the monument, the
Interagency Archeological Services Division of the National Park Service,
and the private landowners to conduct excavations there. The complete
report from these excavations is available on the internet at http://www.cr.nps.gov/seac/halleckweb/.
Battery Halleck consisted of 2 17,000 pound 13-inch mortars, and was the one that issued the signal shot beginning the bombardment of Fort Pulaski. The site is marked by 4 depressions along a hammock area that extends into the surrounding marshland (Click for a Map of the Battery Halleck Area - 61 KB). 11 test units were excavated in three of the four depressions to see if any related artifacts still remained. While no Civil War era artifacts were recovered (some highly corroded metallic fragments were the only possible associated remains), the mapping of the site indicated that the four depressions were most likely the locations of the east and west mortar platforms and the powder magazine with its associated loading room, or antechamber. See the photographs below for a better idea of what the depression areas looked like.
Photographs of the Battery Halleck Area |
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Above: 1990 excavations of the east mortar
platform area. |
Above: 1990 excavations of the powder magazine. |
Above: 1990 excavated unit |
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Fort
Construction and the Civil War (cont.)
Table
of Contents
