and yet so far

St. Michael’s steeple an accustomed sight (April 1865 photo; Library of Congress)

Going on three years now Charleston and especially Fort Sumter have been hugely symbolic (New York City Republicans fired a “miniature Fort Sumter” at a Washington’s birthday celebration back in 1861). The Union has been banging away all year, but Charleston and Sumter are still in rebel hands. A correspondent for a Baltimore newspaper sees eventual Northern success as inevitable.

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 7, 1863:

Charleston through a glass.

–A correspondent of the Baltimore American, writing from the fleet off Charleston, says:

Lying well up, nearly opposite Fort Wagner, we have, across the narrow part of Morris Island, so full a view of Charleston that I have studied the aspect of the city until it has grown familiar to me. We can see the shipping, what there is of it, at the wharves; the plying of one or two small steamers to and fro; trace the streets up from the battery, and almost fancy we see the people moving in them. The tall steeples of Grace, St. Michael’s and Christ’s churches have grown accustomed sights, and those in the fleet who have been familiar with Charleston in other days point out prominent buildings, and speculate as to the fate of old friends whom the war has swept into the vortex of treason and disloyalty. But, though Charleston is thus near to us, the same glass that seems almost to place it within our grasp shows to us Sumter, ruined yet defiant; the threatening embrasures of Fort Johnston, and the long line of batteries which fringe the shore of Sullivan’s Island, from Moultrie upwards, until these sandy outlines are lost in the woods about Mount Pleasant. These are the sentinels that guard the road to the city. They will be overcome, humbled, and captured — not a doubt of that — but whilst they remain, though near, Charleston is not ou[r]s.

“ruined yet defiant” (August 1863 photograph; Library of Congress)

And St. Michael’s still stands.