On Morris island, Gen. James Simons was commanding, with Lieut.-Col. W. G. De Saussure for his artillery chief, and Maj. W. H. C. Whiting for chief of staff. The infantry supports on the island were the regiments of Cols. John Cunningham, Seventeenth South Carolina militia, and Maxcy Gregg, Johnson Hagood and J. B. Kershaw, of the South Carolina volunteers. The artillery was in position bearing on Ship channel, and at Cummings point, bearing on Sumter. The fleet making no attempt to come in, the channel batteries took no part in the bombardment of Sumter.
On Cummings point, six 10-inch mortars and six guns were placed. To the command and direction of these guns, Maj. P. F. Stevens was specially assigned. One of the batteries on the point was of unique structure, hitherto unknown in war. Three 8-inch columbiads were put in battery under a roofing of heavy timbers, laid at an angle of forty degrees, and covered with railroad T iron. Portholes were cut and these protected by heavy iron shutters, raised and lowered from the inside of the battery. This battery was devised and built by Col. Clement H. Stevens, of Charleston, afterward a brigadier-general and mortally wounded in front of Atlanta, July 20, 1864, leading his brigade. ‘Stevens' iron battery,’ as it was called, was ‘the first ironclad fortification ever erected,’ and initiated the present system of armor-plated vessels. The three mortars in battery at
