Siege
The U.S. siege plan would make military history. Quincy Adams Gillmore was General Thomas Sherman’s chief engineering officer. His professional reading had followed the test records of the experimental rifled gun which the Army had begun testing in 1859.
Following a reconnaissance of the ground, he proposed the unconventional plan to reduce Fort Pulaski with mortars and rifled guns. Commanding General Thomas W. Sherman approved the plan, but not the promise of the rifled guns. His endorsement was qualified, believing gunnery effect would be limited, "to shake the walls in a random manner." But the innovative weaponry in the event made his deployed 10,000-man assault force unnecessary. Of the two senior military commanders leading up to the engagement, neither Union General Thomas Sherman, nor Confederate General Robert E. Lee believed the fort could be captured by bombardment alone.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Fort Pulaski
Famous quotes containing the word siege:
“One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)