At Sumter the effort to fight the inferno and to jettison the endangered powder caused a reduction in the rate of fire from the fort’s guns, “a shot every two or three minutes to let them know we were not giving up yet,” wrote Private Thompson. Sumter became a cauldron of heat, smoke, and lacerating shrapnel. One soldier suffered a severe but not mortal injury, “a large piece of shell tearing some frightful flesh wounds in his legs,” Thompson wrote.
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