Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/226

 220 Southern Historical Society Papers.

the hearts of the stricken city from which I come, and which I am sure will appeal to yours.

A few days after the great earthquake, which so appalled and injured the city of Charleston, I received a note from a distinguished officer of the Federal army, Major-General S. VV. Crawford, telling me that he was coming to us to see for himself, in the hope that his representations to the Northern people might take the shape of im- mediate and permanent relief. General Crawford, let me remind you, was an assistant surgeon in the United States army, who hap- pened to be stationed at Fort Moultrie when the war broke out, and when the bombardment of Fort Sumter took place he volunteered for duty at the guns, and was the only man wounded on either side in that engagement. General Crawford came at once to Charleston, while the city was still quaking in the agonies of the disaster, and lame himself, from a wound received at our hands at Reams' s station, clambered over the debris of the city to find his old friends, and to counsel and sympathise with them. Among these was one who, Hke General Crawford, had distinguished himself in Fort Sumter, but that while serving on our side. The Rev. John Johnson, now rector of St. Philip's church, Charleston, was the Confederate engi- neer who, day and night, served in that fortress for more than a year, converting, by his skill and energy, the debris of the walls — as they were knocked down and crumbled to pieces under Gilmore's guns — into a still more formidable work, and who there was himself twice wounded. He it was — who, standing by his church and his people with the same devoted and heroic conduct in the throes of the earthquake as he had stood in Sumter's crumbling walls — that Gen- eral Crawford sought out, and there in a stable, in which Mr. John- son and his family were living, their residence having been injured, stood the two heroes of Fort Sumter — Federal and Confederate — conferring what could be done for our people. Think upon the scene, my comrades, your own thoughts and feelings will do it more justice than any words of mine.

But General Crawford was not the only Federal offi,cer who hur- ried to Charleston in our distress ; nor was he the most represen- tative of those who came. He, indeed, though he had fought us for the Union, had amongst us warm friends — friendships formed before, and continued after the war, which had not broken them. So in his case there was strong personal feeling and sympathy, as well as philanthropy and patriotism. But there came others to us