Two days before the mayor of Atlanta surrendered, the nearby railroad town of Jonesboro had been the scene of heavy fighting. When it became apparent that William T. Sherman's troops would score yet another victory, Capt. W. L. Curry of the First Ohio Cavalry was so overjoyed that years later he wrote: "The sound of the guns and scream of the shell was sweet music to the ears of the skirmishers, and they moved forward with a shout, and the bang! bang! of their sharp-ringing carbines swell the chorus as the mayor and a few citizens appeared in the main street with a white flag to surrender the town."
Nearly a year later, with Union leaders confident of ultimate victory, the gunboats Pawnee, Ottawa, Winona, Wando, Potomska, Sonoma, and J. S. Chambers provided cover for eight thousand troops under Gen. Jacob D. Cox as they advanced on Charleston, the most hated of Confederate cities. Knowing themselves to be outnumbered, Southern soldiers abandoned the ring of forts that was designed to protect the city and set out to join the forces of Robert E. Lee in Virginia. After nearly six hundred days of siege, the city where the war began was stripped of its defensive forces.
Months earlier Jefferson Davis had urged Mayor Charles Macbeth to organize local defense forces that would include all able-bodied civilians. If such defenders were found, they must have evaporated when Cox's Federal troops drew near. The fate of the defenseless port city was in the hands of the civilian leaders and some anxious Federal commanders.
Soon after daylight on February 17, 1865, a naval detachment led by chief scout John L. Gifford ventured out to Fort Sumter and found the installation deserted. Gifford had been back in his boat only a few minutes before he was hailed from Mount Pleasant, a town lying just across the Cooper River from Charleston and close to the fort. Intendant Henry S. Tarr had already secured the signatures of five town wardens to a memorandum stating that Mount Pleasant acknowledged the authority of the United States and asked that "persons and property" should be respected.
Adm. John A. Dahlgren wrote to Adm. David D. Porter that "the navy's occupation [of Charleston] has given this pride of rebeldom to the Union flag." That jubilant message was less than accurate, however. Around 9:00 a.m., Mayor Macbeth formally surrendered the city to Union Gen. Alexander Schimmelfennig.12