Q. A. Gill More to Henry W. Benham, April 23, 1862

GENERAL:

You showed me General Viele’s report of the operations of his command on the Savannah River. As I was present with his forces as General Sherman’s chief engineer until after the Venus Point battery was established, I have, in eompliance with General Totten’s request and with General Sherman’s knowledge, furnished a report of those operations, and shall aecompany my report of the siege of Pulaski with an accurate map of the Savannah River.* I am very desirous that there shall be no conflict or discrepancy in the records. This is my exeuse for ealling your attention to some portions of General Viele’s report, which must have left his hands without having been closely inspected by him. The points to which I refer are—

1st. One impression conveyed in the report is that the obstructions in Wall’s Cut were removed by General Vieles command, when in fact Major Beard, Forty-eighth New York, then the provost-marshal at Hilton Head, was secretly sent out by General Sherman to do this work, with a company of engineers, more than three weeks before the investing force left Port Royal or General Viele was assigned to their command. The obstructions were removed on January 13, two weeks before General Viele’s troops left Port Royal.

2d. The length of the road across Jones Island, over which the Venus Point guns were carried, is represented on the general’s map as considerably longer than the distance from Fort Pulaski to the 10-inch mortar on Long Island, which opened on the fort the last day of the siege, while in fact it is not much over one-half as long. In other words, the Jones Island eauseway is about three-quarters of a mile long, while the distance from Fort Pulaski to the mortar referred to is over one mile and a quarter, according to Coast Survey charts. The mortar was not at the extreme lower end of the island. The effect is to unduly exaggerate the labor of building the road and the danger of serving the mortar. According to statements of Colonel Olmstead and his officers after the surrender not a single shell from Long Island reached the fort; a circumstance which might have been foreseen by a reference to the table of range for 10-inch siege mortars.

* To appear in Atlas.

3d. The map represents a battery on Turtle Island, while in fact none was placed there. c Jt A desire to secure historical accuracy in the records of this siege alone induces me to make these statements, which you are at liberty to make such use of as you’think proper.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,