White Point Garden, with its majestic live oaks, oyster-shell paths, bandstand, monuments, cannons, and walkway upon Charleston's seawall, is known colloquially as "The Battery". Even locals might mostly associate the nickname, now shared with the local professional soccer club, with the assortment of old cannons placed there as memorials. The park and the seawall predate the American Civil War - an 1851 illustration is recognizable to the modern visitor. In 1863, the peaceful park was transformed into a fortress with a huge four-gun earthwork battery on the park's eastern face and south-facing battery with two heavy guns at the foot of King Street on the park's western end. Even so, just inside the huge earthen mounds remained a city park lined with trees.

By mid September 1863, the United States Army and United States Navy, working together, had made significant progress towards cracking open Charleston's defenses. Heavy cannons, primarily Parrott Rifles, firing from US Army batteries on Morris Island had succeeded in reducing most of Fort Sumter's walls to rubble. In late August, the massive 15-Inch Dahlgrens of the US Navy's monitors had battered Sumter's east faces. By September 5th, only a single 32-Pounder remained mounted and fully operational at the fort. Battery Wagner, subject of the heroic yet unsuccessful July attack spearheaded by the 54th Massachusetts and depicted in the culmination of the movie "Glory", had been evacuated on September 7th after US Army siege works rendered it untenable. Morris Island was in Federal hands. The ruins of Sumter were being held by musket, bayonet, and little else.

Fort Sumter had held the US Navy at bay during the "Attack of the Ironclads" on April 7th, but with Sumter almost neutralized, would Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren soon be able to force the entrance to the harbor, take up position just off of the planters' mansions on the waterfront at Charleston, and demand the surrender of the "Cradle of Secession"?

Based on the communications and reports preserved in the "Official Records", it certainly seems like Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard and his subordinate commanders believed this possible, if not likely. Beauregard ordered that the heaviest guns available (two 12.75-Inch Blakely Rifles brought into Wilmington on a blockade runner, a 7-Inch Triple Banded Brooke Rifle being sent from Richmond, an 11-Inch Dahlgren salvaged from the sunken USS Keokuk and mounted at Fort Sumter until it's reduction, and as many 10-Inch Columbiads as possible) be mounted in the batteries being constructed or expanded on Charleston's peninsula. What had previously been secondary works armed with whatever leftovers were available became the focus of Charleston's engineering and ordnance officers.

The largest, most heavily armed battery would be that at White Point Garden on the southern tip of Charleston's peninsula. It received two of the best cannons available: one of the 12.75-Inch Blakelys and the 11-Inch Dahlgren in addition to two 10-Inch Columbiads. But it was only part of a larger system. Any monitor seeking to take up position off of East Bay Street would also have to face Castle Pinckney's much strengthened battery to their rear as well as other two-gun batteries on the east and south sides of the Peninsula also armed with Brooke Rifles and 10-Inch Columbiads. By 1865 when Admiral Dahlgren ordered the newly captured city's defenses mapped, Charleston's waterfront would mount thirteen of the heaviest cannons present in the area in six separate batteries. Castle Pinckney, a mile from the city's waterfront, could create a crossfire with four additional heavy guns.

An 1864 painting by Conrad Wise Chapman depicts the White Point Battery in December 1863. One of the huge British Blakely Rifles is being experimented with at left. Three other cannons are already emplaced: at right is the 11-Inch Dahlgren which had come from Fort Sumter and is reported in place at White Point in an October 7th letter between commanders. At left is a 10-Inch Confederate Columbiad. The center cannon in Chapman's painting looks like a Pattern 1844 Columbiad. 1865 Photographs show the 11-Inch Dahlgren, two 10-Inch Confederate Columbiads, and the carriage of the 12.75-Inch Blakely - the huge gun having been purposely burst to prevent capture. Soldiers and civilians mix as the park-turned-fortress.

These huge cannons would never duel with the US Navy's monitors. They, along with the rest of the defensive network built around Charleston's harbor, would prove too complicated a problem for the fleet. It was eventually General Sherman's columns coming up from Savannah which would prompt Charleston's evacuation in February 1865.

Of the four heavy cannons mounted at "The Battery" at White Point Garden, fragments of the 12.75-Inch Blakely were taken to West Point as trophies. The other three: two 10-Inch Columbiads and an 11-Inch Dahlgren seem to have been sold for scrap sometime after the war. Unless they happen to have been part of the shipment of scrap metal sent north on the schooner Philadelphia in 1877, they no longer exist.

At the end of the 19th Century, community organizations could apply directly to the Army or Navy for obsolete cannons to place as monuments. An effort came together in Charleston to recreate "The Battery" at White Point Garden. Central to the effort was the Rev. Dr. John Johnson, Rector of St. Philips Church, former Major of Engineers, C.S.A., and author of the 1890 book "The Defense of Charleston Harbor, Including Fort Sumter and Adjacent Islands 1863-1865". Johnson, perhaps working with others, selected ex-Confederate cannons which remained in the area. USS Keokuk's other 11-Inch Dahlgren, Number 235, which had been mounted near Fort Moultrie from 1863-1865 and which by the 1890s was all but buried in the sands there was the first cannon brought to White Point Garden. Two 10-Inch Confederate Columbiads were brought - possibly from Fort Sumter. A 7-Inch Brooke Rifle, sent to Charleston from the foundry in Selma, Alabama in September of 1864, was found somewhere in area (it's wartime location being unknown). Barbette carriages for all four cannons were sourced - possibly taken from obsolete US Army cannons which remain to this day at Forts Moultrie and Sumter. The four heavy cannons were mounted directly beside the eastern seawall. Beside them were stacks of 10-Inch shells. Four US Army 13-Inch Mortars which had all been cast at Fort Pitt in 1861-1862 and which had been brought to Fort Moultrie in the 1870s were placed on the south side of the Garden.

One Hundred Twenty-Five years later, these eight heavy cannons of the Civil War remain at White Point Garden. Generations of Charleston children have climbed upon them and looked out upon the harbor. The four along the seawall were moved into the garden proper when East Bay Street was expanded in the 20th Century. Two of them lost the lower chassis to their carriages - possibly due to a hurricane in 1911.

Those interested in the Civil War often visit Charleston to see Fort Sumter, the catalyst of the war, and Fort Moultrie, one of the best displays of American Coast Defense through the centuries. However, they should not miss a third "fort" at White Point Garden, authentically "rearmed" and recreated by veterans of the war and one of the best collections of Civil War heavy artillery anywhere.

Note that at present (August 2025), a multi year construction project on the city's sea wall is drawing to a close, but it is still a bit of a construction zone.

US Navy 11-Inch Dahlgren of USS Keokuk at White Point Garden (October 2023). For more photos of White Point Garden see the posts at this link:

https://www.santee1821.net/preserved-artillery/tag/White+Point+Garden

For more information see:

Johnson, John. The Defense of Charleston Harbor Including Fort Sumter and the Adjacent Islands, 1863-1865. Walker, Evans & Cogswell Company, 1890.

Ripley, Warren. Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War (4th Edition). The Battery Press, 1984.

Ryan, Mike. “The Historic Guns of Forts Sumter and Moultrie”. National Park Service Article.

And the reports and letters preserved in "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion" and "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion".