From the February 22, 2022, Charleston (SC) Post and Courier "SC Battleground Preservation Trust secures a piece of Fort Johnson on James Island" by Adam Parker.
Going back to April 1861, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and the first shot was fired from shore at Union-held Fort Sumter in the middle of the harbor, sparking the long smoldering Civil War. Most folks think those shots were fired from Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island. But they weren't.
They were fired from Confederate Fort Johnson on James Island.
In the early morning of April 12, 1861, Col. James Chesnut Jr. (yes, diarist Mary Chesnut's husband) ordered Captain George S. James to fire a signal shot over Fort Sumter. Lt. Henry S. Farley, commander of the beach battery at Fort Johnson prepared the mortar and then fired it exactly at 4:30 am.
The shell arched in the air and exploded directly over Fort Sumter. A second shot was soon fired by Lt. W.H. Gibbes and the war was on.
Fort Johnson is no more, at least the fortifications aren't. Since 1970, the S.C. Department of Natural resources has been the primary resident of Windmill Point. The College of Charleston maintains its Grice Marine Laboratory there.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Fisheries Division is housed in a building on the point. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has its May Lab for environmental microbiology research, and has owned a large structure in the northwestern corner of the site that has been unused for many years.
--Old B-Runner
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