"Forts, forts, forts"

By Ed Piper

It became the running joke the first few days of our Civil War travels to Charleston and Savannah last month (I'm writing April 2, 2018) that Dianna and I were visiting fort after fort, ad nauseum (at least to her nausea).

She was texting family that we visited six (or so) forts in or in the environs of the two Southern cities, which we loved, by the way. We are really feeding our enjoyment of Southern culture, having visited Mississippi (for Vicksburg) and Louisiana last spring.

On this trip, visiting Fort Sumter, of course, was the centerpiece. On the morning of our first full day in Charleston, South Carolina (Fri., March 9), we were able to get up and get out of our hotel (only a short distance from one of the ferry locations on Patriots Point) and get on an early voyage out into Charleston Harbor. The five busloads of third-graders from Spartanburg, South Carolina accompanying (though they were well-behaved) is another story.

After a beatific (I'm exaggerating) lunch at Magnolias Restaurant in the French Quarter--a gentleman in San Diego had recommended eating there, as had someone once we started our trip--it was back to the Quality Inn on Patriots Point for a much-needed nap (travel and lack of sleep continuing to take their toll).

The next day, Saturday, after a stacked doubleheader of visiting the H.L. Hunley Confederate submarine research site, then touring the Middleton House on the Ashley River, a former rice plantation--already more than I could ask for in a single day--I gently nudged my supportive travel partner and asked, "Could we swing by Fort Moultrie before it closes?" Fort Moultrie, on the west side of Charleston Harbor, was a point from which Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, which is out in the middle of the harbor.

Having checked my not-trusty iPhone 5s (that story later), which was doing a lot of heavy lifting for us as far as Google Maps direction in steering our rental car around Charleston and getting info on potential sites to visit, I found that the visitors center at this latter fort closes at 5 p.m. Fort Moultrie is situated on Sullivan's Island.

We pulled into the parking lot at 4:32, in time for me to buy a to-be-cherished pin of the fort before the visitors center closed down. We were able to walk the grounds of the preserved fort, which was also in play during the Revolutionary War. Dianna chatted amiably with a member of a rock band that was going to perform that night. The various members of the band were splayed out at different points of the shore, relaxing, viewing things, as were we.

A day later, it was Fort Johnson, of which there are no remains, just a former powder house. Finding a crossbar locked across the road to the former fort's location, I walked the distance up the road. Dianna took a break in the Hyundai Sonata (which did good service during the trip; it was just a leaky tire that caused a cliffhanger on our last day--see blog entry on that).

Fort Johnson, on the western side of the harbor, was the location from which Confederates shelled on Fort Sumter from the opposite side from Fort Moultrie. A third point was a battery to the south of Fort Sumter. These were the first shots of the Civil War in April 1861.

So, three forts in three days began the legend.

When, on Monday morning, we drove the 86 miles southwest from our initial city to Savannah, Georgia, I drove us directly to Fort Pulaski, southeast of the metropolitan area, in order to save backtracking. This is where the fort legend really took hold.