Before the emergence of new 19th-century technology, brick forts were the main source of defense used in the United States against overseas enemies. During the Civil War, the Union army used rifled cannon in combat, compelling the Confederate army inside Fort Pulaski to surrender, according to the National Park Service.
Yet while masonry fortifications became obsolete, the bricks that built them hold a history — one that is being told through the fingerprints of the enslaved people who crafted them.
Fort Pulaski National Monument recently told the story on its Facebook page noting the bricks that formed the fortification at Cockspur Island between Savannah and Tybee Island had to be made, shipped to the island and then placed inside.
“Making a brick in the 19th century was a laborious and messy process,” read the Feb. 8 Facebook post. “Soil had to [be] mixed with water and then stomped into clay. Debris like sticks and stones and had to be removed and the wet mixture placed in a wooden mold. Then the still-wet brick had to removed from the mold and allowed to dry for several days before finally being placed in a kiln to harden for nearly a week. Once the brick itself was made, it then had to be transported to the construction site for use in the building project.”
Most of the Fort Pulaski brickmakers were enslaved people who were not only men and women, but children. They labored daily to make bricks “for a fort built to protect the port made rich from their labor,” the post read.
“Though it took eighteen years for Fort Pulaski to be completed, the names and stories of the enslaved people who made the bricks for the fort have been hidden and, in many cases, lost,” it continued.
Since the bricks had to be made by hand, however, fingerprints and handprints would often be left behind. According to the post, they “serve as a tangible reminder that while the architecture and the military history of the fort may be impressive, there is another vitally important story that sits right in front of our eyes if we only just look for it.”
According to National Park Service guide Elizabeth Smith, enslaved people had a pivotal part in not only the construction of Fort Pulaski but its maintenance.
As is the case with many stories of enslaved people, however, “sadly very little information is known about any individuals or even what it was like,” she told The Civil War Picket.
You can visit the Fort Pulaski National Monument near Savannah during reduced hours. Limited site access is available, however, so visit the website for details.
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