Back in Business

About ten o’clock on the morning of Feb. 18, 1865, Lt. Col. Augustus Bennett and two dozen Union soldiers landed at the foot of Broad Street. Federals had heard the explosions of the Blakely guns and other ordnance during the night, so they knew that the Rebels were clearing out. City Councilman George Williams arrived to hand Bennett a note from Mayor Charles Macbeth: “The military authorities of the Confederate States have evacuated the City. I have remained to enforce law and preserve order until you take such steps as you think best.” Bennett’s men extinguished fires still blazing, and raised the Stars and Stripes over public buildings. Black soldiers arrived later that day to provide a provost guard. The imposition of Federal authority over Charleston brought a return of commerce, when Northern businessmen sent ships to the city to initiate trade that had ended at the outbreak of war. As Charleston historian Jack Thomson has written of this photograph, “an occupying army and Yankee merchants have arrived to give this port more life than it had in the previous four years.”

This is the caption as printed in 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War. It has not yet been through this site’s research and fact-checking pass.