Page:Nye's History of the USA.djvu/286

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282
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

the shattered remnant of the battered foe retreated from the field.

While all this was going on in Pennsylvania, Pemberton was arranging terms of surrender at Vicksburg, and from this date onward the Confederacy began to wobble in its orbit, and the President of this ill-advised but bitterly punished scheme began to wish that he had been in Canada when the war broke out.

In April of the same year Admiral Dupont, an able seaman with massive whiskers, decided to run the fortifications at Charleston with iron-clads, but the Charleston people thought they could run them themselves. So they drove him back after the sinking of the Kennebec and the serious injury of all the other vessels.

General Gillmore then landed with troops. Fort Wagner was captured. The 54th Regiment of colored troops, the finest organized in the Free States, took a prominent part and fought with great coolness and bravery. By December there were fifty thousand colored troops enlisted, and before the war closed over two hundred thousand.

It is needless to say that this made the Yankee unpopular at the time in the best society of the South.

General Gillmore attempted to capture Sumter, and did reduce it to a pulp, but when he went to gather it he was met by a garrison still concealed