Four years of shelling by Union guns, including near constant bombardment over the previous year and a half, had reduced it to a rounded hillock of earth and shattered masonry. One discernible wall remained, dented and scaled by the impacts of hardshot and explosive shells. Two months earlier, Charleston’s mayor, Charles Macbeth, had surrendered the city to a force of Black soldiers, the 21st Regiment U.S. Colored Infantry.
