The Pen of Augustine Thomas Smythe

Good information can come from a twenty-year-old college kid. Augustine Thomas Smythe was born Oct. 5, 1842, in Charleston, the son of an Irish-born Presbyterian minister. He added the e to his last name to avoid confusion with another A. Smyth in the city. He was attending South Carolina College when Lincoln was elected president. With his fellow students he joined a militia company. A year after Sumter he transferred to the Washington Light Infantry, eventually Co. A, 25th South Carolina. With his unit he served in the Charleston area throughout much of the war. In October 1862, Smythe was detailed to the Confederate Signal Department, and was promoted to sergeant four months later. When engineers erected a tower at the Battery, Smythe stood in it, signaling forts and ships as to enemy movements—flags by day, torches at night. In late March 1864, Smythe was stationed to stand behind a big telescope on a platform in the 186-foot steeple atop St. Michael’s Church, shown here, Augustine Smythe was a prolific letter-writer. His letters, today at the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston, have been published by W. Eric Emerson and Karen Stokes, eds., Days of Destruction: Augustine Thomas Smythe and the Civil War Siege of Charleston (Columbia, 2017). On March 31, 1864, he wrote his mother—his parents had refugeed to Summerton, S.C.: Here I am on my lofty perch behind a big telescope looking out for any movements of the Yankees….The duty is pretty heavy, as I am on every other day & half of every other night. The worst difficulty is the trouble of getting up here for it is not a joke climbing up 150 feet.

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.