General Benham, with a small force, fought the Confederates at the middle of June, and was defeated. Further attempts to capture Charleston were then suspended.
Hunter was succeeded in the command of the department by General 0. M. Mitchel, who, as we have observed, was called to Washington from Tennessee, where he chafed under Buell's command. He  reached Hilton Head on the 16th of September, and with his usual vigor he devised plans and prepared to execute them for the public good. Hilton Head Island was swarming with refugee slaves, and he at once took measures for their relief, laying out a village, causing neat and comfortable log-houses to be built for their residences, and finding employment for them. He was preparing to use his military force with vigor in his department; but before his arrangements were completed, he was smitten with a disease similar to the yellow fever, when he was conveyed to the more healthy locality of Beaufort, where he died on the 30th of October. From that time, until the spring of 1864, very little of importance occurred in the Department of the South, of which Hunter again became the commander.
CHAPTER XXIL
Efforts to Capture Charleston - "The Swamp Angel" - Siege of Fort Wagner Sumter in Ruins - Events West of the - Kississippi - Invasion of Missouri Lawrence Sacked - Events in Arkansas and in the Indian Territory - Raid into Missouri - Struggle for Louisiana - Grant in New Orleans - Designs against Texas - Forrest in Tennessee - Strength of the Nationals and Confederates Compared - High-Handed Measures - The British and the Confederates - Good Signs - Grant Lieutenant-General - Campaign of 1864 - Sherman's Raid in Mississippi - Massacre at Fort Pillow - Forrest's Exploits Red River Expedition - The Expedition Abandoned - Negro Troops.
Although Charleston had become a comparatively unimportant point in the grand theatre of the war, its possession was coveted by the National Government because of the salutary moral effect which such conquest would produce. A strong effort to accomplish that purpose was made in the spring of 1863. On the 6th of April, Admiral Dupont crossed Charleston Bar with nine "monitor" or turreted iron vessels, leaving five gunboats outside as a reserve, and proceeded to attack Fort Sumter, the most formidable obstacle in his way to the city. At the same time a co-operating force of land troops, four thousand strong, under General Truman Seymour, took a masked position on Folly Island. As Dupont approached, the cannon of the Confederates on Sumter and the adjacent batteries were silent until the vessels were entangled in an unsuspected network of torpedoes and other obstructions, when nearly three hundred guns opened a concentric fire upon the fleet, driving them back to the ocean and destroying the Keokuk, one of the smallest of the iron-clads. The land troops could do nothing until Fort Sumter was reduced, and the enterprise was a failure.
In June following, General Quincey A. Gillmore succeeded General Hunter in the command of the Southern Department. He found himself at the head of eighteen thousand men, with a generous supply of ordnance, small arms, and stores. An expedition against Charleston, by land and water, was immediately planned. Gillmore determined to seize Morris Island, on which was strong Fort Wagner that commanded Fort Sumter. That island and its military works in his possession, he might batter down Fort Sumter with heavy siege guns, and lay Charleston in ashes with his shells, if it was not surrendered. Dupont did not approve the plan; and early in July, Admiral John A. Dahlgren took his place. General Alfred H. Terry was sent with a force to James Island to mask Gillmore's intentions, when National troops were suddenly landed on Morris Island, and, with the aid of batteries on Folly Island, they drove the Confederates into Fort Wagner. Then Gillmore planted a line of batteries across Morris Island to confront that fort, which he found to be much stronger than he suspected. The Nationals assaulted it (July 11) and were repulsed, when a simultaneous bombardment by sea and land was determined on. This was done on the 18th of July, when a hundred great guns opened on the fort from the ships and the land-batteries. Meanwhile General Terry had been attacked by a force sent from Charleston, by Beauregard, to surprise him. But the vigilance of Terry never slept, and the Confederates were easily repulsed. The Nationals were then withdrawn from James Island and joined the main body of troops on Morris Island.
At sunset on the 18th, Gillmore's forces moved in two columns, to attack Fort Wagner. A violent
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