In 1863, amid Fort Sumter's ruins, exploding shells struck the parade ground as the fort remained the center of the bitter struggle to control Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. For nearly two years from 1863 to 1865, Confederate soldiers endured constant Union cannon fire. Union guns reduced most of Fort Sumter to rubble, but the Confederate garrison refused to surrender. Daily dispatches from 1863 record the effort to hold the fort: on August 14, 470 laborers and mechanics worked in two reliefs day and night on the defenses; on August 18, enemy fire lasted from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., with 876 shots and shells fired, 452 striking outside, 244 inside, and 180 passing over; on August 24, 210 negros worked all night strengthening the western magazine, the flag-staff was shot away twice, and the whole garrison labored through the night; by September 4, not a single gun en barbette remained, the northeastern and northwestern terre plein had fallen in, most of the southern wall was down, and the eastern wall was very nearly shot away.
