George Carpenter, 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, DOD, Explicit Battle of Port Royal Letters

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Nov 18, 2016 - Nov 19, 2016

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• Lot Description
  Lot of 10.
  
  George Carpenter enlisted on September 27, 1861 as a 2^nd lieutenant. He mustered into the 3^rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery on October 9, 1861. After completing training, he left with his regiment aboard the Cahamba, where he became miserably sea sick (Fortress Monroe, October 15, 1861). Carpenter was part of the Du Pont expedition, which was the largest joint Army-Navy operation of the war to date and the largest flotilla ever assembled in the United States. En route to a secret attack on Port Royal, a rumor circulated on board his ship. Apparently, a sergeant deserted the Union and brought his signal book to the enemy. Consequently, officers had to adopt new signals, which delayed their arrival. The traitorous scoundrel, wrote Carpenter. If he had a hint of the destination of the fleet, may give information that may ruin the enterprise but the trail will be made (October 29, 1861). The rumor was not the only action on board. Carpenter and his crew endured a terrible storm with hurricane strength winds that dispersed the fleet. After all of their efforts, the secret mission was disrupted when Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin telegraphed Governor Pickens and General Drayton, notifying them that there was an enemy fleet heading for Port Royal. Carpenter’s ship arrived and the battle began. On November 7th he wrote:
  
  A day of battle and a victory and our flag waves over the Confederate batteries of Port Royal harbor in South Carolina…. A grand sight it was believe me to see the armed vessels led by the Frigate Wabash…The Rebels fought strongly and hour after hour there was hundreds of explosions of the big guns and a rain of shot and shell upon the ironclad batteries…how much life has been lost on both sides (November 7). On the war torn beaches of Port Royal he wrote to his sister about the bloody aftermath:
  
  For the last long 4 nights I have slept a troubled sleep (on all of the avenging land ticks and mosquitos) wrapped in my cloak on its blood stained sands…[we] are hard at work in putting things to the rights so that now with the exception of freshly moved earth and the dismantled and shattered guns most traced of the battle are removed. The slain with the exception of one- (a Surgeon who was mangled and buried under a bomb shelter—by the bursting of a shell and afterwards dug out by our fatigue parties)- were buried before I was landed which was the day after the battle. Little had been done besides that so that I have ocular proof of the terrible effects of a bombardment…. splatters of blood and pieces of flesh stich to the splinters and frames [of the barbetto guns(?)] was all that told of them. No wonder they fled such a pit of horror as the first must have been in the height of the fire leaving everything not even stopping to strike the serviceable guns throwing away their muskets blankets etc. and running for dear life (Fort Walker, Hilton Head, Port Royal Harbor SC).
  
  After securing the area, Carpenter and his men settled at Fort Wells in Hilton Head, SC. He wrote to his sister:
  
  We are drilling hard on siege Columbia…our southern cousins kindly left for out use Our regt. has charge of the fort the Generals Headquarters and also the immense department of the Quarter Master General’s stores of ordinance and provisions and the like. About 100 men with Sergts. And Corps. are detailed for guard daily and each 1^st Lieut. have command of the guard in turn (Fort Wells, Hilton Head, Port Royal, SC, November 20, 1861).
  
  Shortly after his letter, he was ordered to Fort Seward to be quartermaster and commissary. Proud of his new appointment, he wrote to his sister, I have some 400 men to provide for including soldiers, citizens, contraband(?), mechanics, SC(?), and a small squad under my immediate direction (Ft. Seward, Pay Point, SC). He wrote to her frequently and in great detail of his life, duties, battles, and of General Thomas Sherman.
  
  Carpenter nearly died in the summer of 1862 from a case of dysentery. Confused from fever and lack of fluids, he weakly scrawled a letter to his sister, I have been to the valley of the shadows since I last wrote and it is with an uncertain hand that I scrawl a few lines today. I managed to sit up for the first time in two weeks and I looked in the glass…dysentery has reduced me to a skeleton nearly fate shadowing as a ghost, but I think I am rid of him (Ft. Seward, Bay Point, S.C., May 28, 1862). In a much stronger hand, he wrote to his sister again,  I am gaining strength fast and can attend to my duties very well now. But I came very near paying the debt to nature—she gave me up (June 6, 1862). Nature had not given up Carpenter, it only allowed him to gain more strength before taking his life on June 28, 1862.
  
  In addition to Carpenter's letters, more Civil War items related to Port Royal, SC, and the navy include: stamped, canceled cover from a Union soldier in Port Royal, SC, dated November 1st, 1861, addressed to Fulton Co., Ohio, made of reused printed wallpaper, highlighting the severe shortage of paper in this part of the Confederacy, with Port Royal cancellation; a second cover with cancellation from Philadelphia and three cent red Washington stamp, addressed to First Assistant Engineer John Johnson USN, US Gunboat Pinola off Mobile Western Gulf Squadron. The Pinola was famous as one of two gunboats that broke the great link-chain that obstructed the approach of Admiral Farragut's fleet below Ft. Jackson and St. Philip, leading to the capture of New Orleans; and more.

  Condition

  Typical folds and toning of the paper. 
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