Fort Providence

“ These forts were defended and protected as well as circumstances would permit. They would have been but as houses of cards in the warfare of civilized men; but they were of service against the simple tactics of the savage. A blockhouse of solid timber, with rude barracks, a magazine, a well, the whole surrounded by a high stockade with loopholes, — such was the wilderness fort. They were designed to admit of communication with each other, and so with the centres of civilization, whence from time to time supplies and reinforcements for their garrisons might be brought to them. ”

“ Probably the most picturesque of fortifications in the United States, Fort Marion annually receives thousands of visitors, many drawn from the leisured throng who have made St. Augustine the winter social capital of the American nation. ”

“ The fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with their bare, precipitous sides, will remain as historic monuments, grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt long ago, and grows in abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat around Fort Ellsworth will be a century hence. ”

“ The French are men; they are fortifying everywhere. But you are all like women, bare and open, without fortifications." Not one representative of seven colonies had authority to reassure him. Sir William Johnson did, indeed, negotiate a treaty of alliance with the Iroquois and the western Indians; and the Virginia assembly, yielding at last to Governor Dinwiddie's insistent demands, appropriated some money for maintaining the wooden fort, well named Fort Necessity, which Colonel Washington had built on the Ohio. ”

“ We shall soon begin a fortification on this side that will command the East River and the town. The troops in the City are fortifying in one of the Streets that will command the old fort, if the Enemy should get possession of it, (and are putting down the rear of the fort.) We have begun another Fort near "Hell Gate." The men of war have dropped down below the town and are very quiet, but supplied from the City by orders of this Congress. Our troops are very hearty and fare well as times will admit, most of the valuable articles are moved out of the City, and one third of the inhabitants. ”

“ To see a fort is naturally supposed to be not the most formidable of undertakings; but to see Fort Fisher means a ride of miles over the bleakest of sand bars; means the climbing of great heaps of sand, under the hottest of suns; means a scrambling over irregular chasms and precipices of sand, where the explosions have destroyed at once every semblance of fortification and every foot of solid earth—means all this, prolonged for hours, under the penalty of the consciousness that otherwise you would be pretending to see Fort Fisher, when you were doing nothing of the sort. ”

“ It is built on a little bay, at the foot of a hill shaded by trees, and forms an oblong square, divided into four streets, and has two full streets, which cut each other at right angles. The houses are well built, and regular. They have only one church, which is called after the city. St. John's Fort, standing about a mile north of it, is a strong, irregular fortification, well mounted with cannon, and capable of making a long defense. ”

“ The fortifications were kept up largely to afford protection against raids from Mexican pirates and hostile Indians, though they were often useful against more civilized foes. It was at this port that Andrew Jackson prepared to receive the British invaders. The magnificent use he made of the fortifications should have given to the old place a lasting standing and a permanent preservation. Some forty years ago, however, the fort was purchased and turned into a kind of country resort, and more lately it has become the home of a recreation club. ”

“ On the right of the parade is a row of cottages facing a narrow street, and at the end of this modest thoroughfare can be seen the eastern abutments of the old fort. As one approaches the fort itself the star shape of the walls is plainly observable and its dimensions easily taken in. It is not a large place, this historic old work, and makes no great impression upon the beholder from its material aspect. Batteries of ancient guns are mounted on the walls fronting the river. ”

“ Like all American forts, it was formed with earthen ramparts, covered by rich green turf, and defended by tall stockades of dry white timber. Within were seen the shingle-covered roofs of the low barrack buildings, tarred and painted black, and all glistening in the sunshine. Two of the lower bastions were faced with stone and washed by the azure water of Lake George, while a deep fosse secured the fort on the landward, and dangerous morasses protected its flanks. Beyond lay a cleared space, where the timber of the old primeval forest had been cut down for garrison purposes. ”

“ Morning bugle call, the evening gun, grey ships of war stealing in from a misty sea with long plumes of soft black smoke, military uniforms on the streets and trig bright houses are, probably, the average civilian’s impressions of a stay at Old Point Comfort where is located Fort Monroe. “Fort” or “Fortress,” for the place changes its sex indifferently according to the state of mind of the speaker, it probably satisfies the popular conception of a mighty stronghold of defence more completely than any other such establishment in the United States. ”

“ The old fort, long neglected, and subject to the assaults of wintry blasts and beating storms, rises high above the Plain, and there, in grim majesty, it patiently awaits the silent march of disintegration and general decay. Approached in the mellow light of an evening sunset, when a single pencil of rays lingers and illuminates the crests of the mountains in the east, and a few scattered clouds, tinged with scarlet, gold and silver tints, fading and blending in perfect harmony with the deep blue of the firmament, indicate the close of the day ”

“ Fort Ancient, which could have held a garrison of 60,000 men with their families and provisions, was one of a line of fortifications which extend across the State and served to check the incursion of the savages of the North in their descent upon the Mound-builder country.
The second class of military works, which are exceedingly numerous on all the watercourses—existing not only on the Ohio and Mississippi, but on all their tributaries, especially on the Muskingum, Scioto, Miami, Wabash, Illinois, Kentucky, and minor streams—are mounds which served as outlooks. ”

“ The fort being finished, the governor commanded two guns to be mounted, which could not be done without great toil and labour; as also a house to be built within the fort, and afterwards the narrow way, that led to the said fort, to be broken and demolished, leaving no other ascent thereto than by a ladder. Within the fort gushes out a plentiful fountain of pure fresh water, sufficient to refresh a garrison of a thousand men. Being possessed of these conveniences, and the security these things might promise, the French began to people the island, and each of them to seek their living ”

“ The Governor, his beautiful wife, and their guest, Natalie Ivanhoff, have knelt at the jewelled altar.
At the right of the Fort is a small "town" of rude huts which accommodates some eight hundred Indians and Siberian convicts, the working-men of the company. Above the "town," on a high knoll, is a large grist-mill. Describing an arc of perfect proportions, its midmost depression a mile behind the Fort, a great mountain forms a natural rampart. At either extreme it tapers to the jagged cliffs. ”

“ Cheyenne lies a good four miles away, and is a good deal bigger than you take it to be. But here to the south lies a strange diamond-shaped enclosure,—a queer arrangement of ugly brown wooden barns and sheds far out all by itself on the bare bosom of the prairie. That is called a frontier fort. It is not a fort. It never has been. Even tradition cannot be summoned to warrant the name. It was built after our great civil war, and named for one of the gallant generals who fell fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. It has neither stockade nor simplest defensive work. ”

“ The Indian word Cataraqui means "Clay bank rising from the water," and after the fort was built the meaning changed to "fort rising from the water." Here the Sieur de La Salle, in 1678, built the first vessel navigating the lake. The British captured the fort in 1762, naming it Kingston, after the American Revolution, and by fortifying the promontories commanding the harbor, made it the strongest military post in Canada after Quebec and Halifax, the chief work being Fort Henry. ”

“ The Fort has neither walls nor moat, some of the ramparts only half finished, no means of closing it to make it secure. It would seem that they have been careless in the guarding of the Fort, sending only twenty-five men each day to do duty when it should have at least one hundred men constantly on the watch. ”

“ It is there, towards the village, over against those hillsides, over against Damloup, that the enemy’s onslaught was shattered. And the fort, on its plateau, with its superstructure half crushed, with breaches in its double wall, seems like the formidable hulk of an ironclad which still floats upon the waters, not yet abandoned by its crew. ”

“ The embankments and ditches, and the remains of the block-houses of Fort Nonsense, are very prominent, and the form of the embryo fortification may be distinctly traced among the trees. Its name was derived from the fact that all the labor bestowed upon it was intended merely to counteract the demoralizing effects of idleness. The American army was comfortably hutted, and too remote and secure from the enemy to make camp duty at all active. Washington foresaw the evil tendency of idleness, and discreetly ordered the construction of a fort upon a hill overlooking the town. ”

“ Monday, the 19th instant, being a very clear day, I went down about 2 o’clock, and had a very good view of the Fort. At times I could see objects 100 feet each away from me. The Fort forms an obtuse angle to the west, on a line with the north end of the hospital—the wall of the angle runs in a N.E. direction, the other in a S.S.E. The walls are built of brick, and are as solid as so much rock. I have traced and examined several of the embrasures and have no doubt but that the guns in them are covered with coral; that known as “brain stone,” being large and numerous on the fort. ”

“ In fact these two inside forts could be used as citadels, or a place of refuge when the long exterior lines of defense were captured. And this was the case with fort "C" in the battle of Allatoona. The whole formed a mountain fortress.
The Federals call the intrenchments at "R" "rifle pits," to which they bear about as much relation, in regard to strength, as a battleship does to a dispatch boat. Commencing about one hundred and twenty-five yards west of the fort "C," and on the south side of the Cartersville road, are two lines of intrenchments running nearly parallel with that road. ”

“ The appearance of the fort is very striking, standing as it does hundreds of miles from any settlement, on the vast and lifeless prairie, surrounded by hordes of hostile Indians, and far out of reach of intercourse with civilised man; its mud-built walls inclosing a little garrison of a dozen hardy men, sufficient to hold in check the numerous tribes of savages ever thirsting for their blood. ”

“ He maintained a force of trappers who were always welcome at his fort, and whom he generously kept without cost to themselves. He taught the Indians blanket-weaving, hat-making, and other trades, and he even organized them into military companies. The fort which he built was enclosed on four sides and of imposing dimensions and convenience. It mounted twelve pieces of artillery, supported a regular garrison of forty in uniform, and contained within its walls a blacksmith shop, a distillery, a flour mill, a cannery, and space for other necessary industries. ”

“ The fortifications extend over three rocky hills that are in close proximity to each other. Being perched up on high, the fort has not suffered such terrible things at the hands of its enemies as Fort St. ”

“ Some portions of the exterior wall are yet in good preservation, and 186 the whole line of fortification may be easily traced out; but all the structures within the quadrangle are quite dilapidated, and trees of a large size are springing from the ruins: an extensive powder-magazine, however, in a gorge of one of the bastions, yet retains its original form and solidity. The western angle of the fort and an entire bastion was, about fifty years since, undermined and thrown down by a slough from the Mississippi ”

“ This was to provide a rallying point for the frightened settlers. It was completed in 1677 and garrisoned by soldiers from New York. The fort was known as Fort Charles and the town around it, which was built up on the site of the old settlements, was known as Jamestown. Under the new régime a military government was established, of which the commandant of the post was the head. The free living inhabitants of the post were irked at being under strict martial rule. ”

“ If you drew in your breath quick from the top of a hill you felt a great man. Ridley, the chief trader, and myself have come to the Fort on our way to the Mackenzie River. In the yard of the Fort the grass have grown tall, and sprung in the cracks under the doors and windows; the Fort have not been use for a long time. Once there was plenty of buffalo near, and the caribou sometimes; but they were all gone—only a few. The Indians never went that way, only when the seasons were the best. ”