The Southern Lights During The Civil War

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s for Monday, January 6, 2025.

This first bog of the New Year, is in the form of a ‘book report’. While doing research for these lighthouse books, I have had the pleasure of reading so many great books and stories, on how these lighthouses around the country were built, were operated, about the people who worked them, and also those that were destroyed. When working on the southern lights, I came across a newly published book, I wanted to share, ‘When the Southern Lights Went Dark’ by Mary Louise Clifford and the late J. Candace Clifford.

The Confederacy extinguished the lights in the lighthouses it was in control of, long before any shots were fired at Fort Sumter. ‘When the southern Lights Went Dark: The Lighthouse Establishment during the Civil War’ will tell you the story of the men, that took on the task of finding the lenses and lamps, repairing the deliberate destruction made to the towers and the lightships, and the work done to relight them as soon as the United States Navy could give them the protection needed.

While under normal conditions, military officers filled the posts of engineers and inspectors in each of the lighthouse districts, now it would become the task of civilians, who were talented enough to build and maintain lighthouses, but could also supervise a party of workmen and make crucial decisions on their own. While the Light-House Board was located in Washington, they could do little but give advice, order needed equipment and pay the bills.

The book is written, as one would write a diary, and started in 1861 when the hostilities began. The Confederate states encompassed Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, also included were Arkansa and Tennessee, although these last two states did not have lighthouses.

” You are instructed to relight the light at New Canal (above image), under your charge, at sunset this day, Wednesday, October 21, 1863, and every night there after. The military injunction under which the light was extinguished, has been removed.” (Postcard image courtesy of this author).

It would take a number of years to re-established the lights to working condition again, but the Civil War was long over, and most of the aids to navigation that had been extinguished or destroyed by the Confederacy were again guiding mariners to safety into the southern ports. Some of the repaired lights would be temporary and would replaced as Congress appropriated funds. The men who spent so many years hunting for the missing light apparatus, scrounging for materials, worrying for the security of their men, must have felt a heavy burden lifted from their shoulders.

I would like to thank Mary Louise Clifford and the late J. Candace Clifford, for the use of the material from their beautifully written book about such a difficult and ill used time in United States history, and all the hard work involved in putting together the research and writing. I hope this might peak the reader, some further interest and maybe a trip to your local library?

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