One would have assumed that enslaved laborers would have been involved in the building of the fortress which began in 1829 when the enslaved population in South Carolina was approaching 300,000. That was no more than an intelligent guess until 2010 when long-lost Fort Sumter construction records were uncovered in the National Archives. Within those records were “slave rolls”, actual invoices of the enslaved’ s names, hours worked, some indication of what was worked on, amount of pay, and the owner’s name.
A series of these rolls was submitted while the foundation was being constructed of 200 to 500-pound blocks of granite and other stone shipped down from New England where quarries existed close to the ocean. From ocean-going ships, the stones were loaded onto barges from which the enslaved workmen would heave the stones along a pentagonal pattern established by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The bed of stones created was known as a spread foundation to erect the brick and concrete fort on. The immensity of this project was astounding. It took almost 11 years to bring the foundation up to about 3 feet above a normal high tide. The sandbar that the fort was laid out upon was too narrow for the entire fort. While most areas required only about nine feet of stone, the corners could require as much as 12 to 14 feet of stone. Enslaved workmen belonging to a Mr. Venning of Mount Pleasant were contracted to perform this difficult work. Venning Road in Mt. Pleasant bears the name of that family and descendants of these enslaved workmen likely reside in the Charleston Area.
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As the fort neared completion, an incident occurred in the illegal transatlantic slave trade that saw the fort occupied by several hundreds of African captives who were in the process of being sold into slavery. The US Navy had captured the ship Echo intending to smuggle its human cargo into the United States and brought the ship into Charleston Harbor in August of 1858. The captives were initially unloaded at Castle Pinckney which was too small to safely house so many. The partially constructed Fort Sumter was then chosen to house the mostly young boys and girls for several months until arrangements could be made to carry them back to Liberia.
Following the 32-hour bombardment of Fort Sumter and the near destruction of the barracks and quarters by fire, the Confederacy was eager to restore the fort to defend Charleston Harbor. The Confederate engineers hired large numbers of enslaved workmen to clear debris and partially reconstruct the barracks and quarters. Not since the housing of the African captives from the ship Echo had so many blacks been within the fort.
Slave rolls document the use of enslaved labor for a number of projects at the fort. Following the US Navy ironclad attack in April of 1863, larger numbers of workers hastily repaired the damage, added thick interior reinforcing walls to the powder magazines, and began reinforcing the land-facing rear gorge of the fort. While this work was underway, President Lincoln was designing another path to capture Fort Sumter and Charleston.
Recognizing the limitations of a Naval assault, the President ordered the US Army to begin a siege against Fort Sumter like had been done at Savannah a year earlier to capture Fort Pulaski. Getting heavy cannons close to Fort Sumter would prove to be a more difficult proposition. Realizing the vulnerability of coast fortifications to siege cannons, the Confederates had been working to fortify Morris Island into a defense of Fort Sumter. Batteries were planned on the South end using large natural sand dunes and on the North end nearest Sumter a large earthwork named Battery Greg was built with enslaved labor. An even larger work built with enslaved labor was located about 1900 yards from Fort Sumter at a point where the island was at its narrowest. Known to the Confederates as Battery Wagner, the Union would soon call it Fort Wagner.
By July of 1863, Union forces had massed on Folly Island just south of Morris Island, and on the morning of the 10th, in a well-coordinated assault with the US Navy, the Army was able to capture the southern half of Morris Island. Only Battery Wagner prevented them from going further toward Fort Sumter.