The following is from the book

In The War For The Union
1861-1865

by Abraham J. Palmer, D.D.
written in 1881-1885

CHAPTER VI (Part 2)

Morris Island -- July 18, 1863.

(Part 1) -- "Battery" Wagner --Location --Construction --The Model at West Point --The Union Fleet --The Bombardment --The Confederate Garrison --Account of the Confederate General Taliaferro --Strong's "Fighting Brigade" --Putnam's and Stephenson's Brigades in Support --(Part 2)--The Three Assaults --Charge of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts --Their Repulse --Death of Colonel Shaw --Charge of Strong's Brigade -- The Sixth Connecticut and Forty-eighth New York in Advance --Terrible Slaughter --Capture of the Southeast Bastion --Confederate Account --Losses --General Strong Mortally Wounded --Charge of Putnams's Brigade in Support --Its Failure --Lieutenant-Colonel Green Killed --Colonel Barton Wounded --Captains Farrell and Hurst Killed --Lieutenant Edwards Killed --Captain Paxson and Lieutenant Fox mortally wounded --(Part 3)--The Defense of the Captured Bastion till Midnight --The Mistaken Volley from the Rear --A Costly Blunder --Calls for Reinforcements --Why They Never Came --"Holding the Fort" --Heroic "Privates" --The Midnight Surrender --Account of Charles Cowley --Account of Confederate General Taliaferro --"The Assailants Assailed" --"Die-no-mores, Follow Me" --Experiences of Private Conklin --Blunders --Medals --Fate of the Prisoners --Fort Wagner Twice Revisited --Its Final Capture.

And it did mean assault -- the most terrible and the most fatal in all the history of modern warfare, with the single exception of the famous charge at Balaklava.  "Strong's fighting brigade" were in advance:  less than a month before, the regiments which composed it had been selected for this very work.  Already they had won  a fine fame by their dashing victory on the morning of July 10th and the impetuous  assault on the morning of the 11th, and they had come to possess an enthusiastic affection for the young and gallant commander, who did not drive them into battle, but led them.  Their career was brief, for on this night it passed into final eclipse.  Putnam's brigade was in support.  Stephenson's followed Putnam's.  As the day wore on, the rumor ran around that we were to make a grand charge just before nightfall, and carry that heap of defiant sand  at the point of the bayonet.  We ate a hearty supper that night (it was the last meal many a brave fellow ever needed);  each man received a ration of whiskey, and the regiments were ordered to "fall in."  They did so quickly, noiselessly, and without confusion, and formed -- a mile of men in column by company -- on the beach.  The fire from the batteries and the ships redoubled its fury as the columns were gathering for the assault.  Aids and orderlies rode up and down, giving rapid orders.  General Truman Seymour was in command of the entire assaulting column;  General Strong led his own brigade.  Two things now happened -- the one of them contingent on the other -- which had a fatal effect.  The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, a brave regiment of colored troops, commanded by Colonel Robert G. Shaw, was sent to the front.  The purpose possible was that, if glory should be won in the assault, they should share in it.  Political considerations too often outweighed military ones in the war.  (The same happened again, and with more fatal consequences, at the explosion of the Petersburg mine a year afterward.)  Perhaps it would have been a spectacle in history for negro soldiers to have led the assault that captured the redoubtable bank of Fort Wagner and put the rebel city of Charleston at the mercy of the Union arms.  At any rate they were assigned to Strong's brigade for the occasion, and marched past us to the front.  That would not have been such a catastrophe (for the regiment acquitted itself with the greatest valor), but precious moments of time were lost.  Before the assaulting columns were finally formed,  a storm also rose in the sky, and it grew dark suddenly.  It was that loss of priceless moments and the coming on of the night which saved the rebel garrison in Fort Wagner from being swept into the sea.  Who will not recall his sensations as he stood in his place in the ranks, as the night settled down upon us and we began to realize, the fearfulness of the assault we were about to attempt.  To many a gallant fellow those moments were the last of earth.
     Before us lay the approach to the fort -- a gradual ascent, 1350 yards in distance, which had been smooth as a floor before the bombardment.  Then you came to the moat, filled that night waist-deep with water;  then a great bank -- the exterior slope -- twenty-five feet in height rose before you.  Behind that, at the point where we struck it (the sea-face bastion), was a terre-plein some fifty feet across, containing guns and magazines; then in the rear of that the superior slope, nearly as high as the other; and underneath it all lines of underground bomb-proofs, roofed with palmetto-logs and sand-bags, where the garrison was hidden in security throughout the bombardment.
     Historical writers have insisted that there was but one assault made on that fatal night:  in fact there were three.  Technically speaking, it may be considered one general assault, but it was made by three distinct columns, at three separate moments, with decided intervals between them, and directed against two different angles of the fort.
     The writer desires to call special attention to this fact, for only by bearing it all in mind can the student of this brief but sanguinary battle comprehend it.
     The first assault was made by the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, against the curtain of the fort on the left:  It failed.  The second assault wa made by Strong's "fighting brigade," against the sea-face bastion in our front:  it succeeded.  The third assault was made by Putnam's brigade in support:  it failed, and therefore finally it all failed; and the only success of that fiery hour was the triumph of those heroic spirits who died that night on those ensanguined sands by the side of the sea, that the American Republic might not perish from the earth.
     In the same sense in which it was all one general assault, Colonel Shaw's colored regiment did lead it;  but in fact the charge which they made was distinct, preceding the others, was in  different formation, and directed against a different point.  At the command of General Strong, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts moved forward, -- formed in column of wings, -- the right resting on the sea.  They obliqued to the left, and attacked the curtain at the land-face of Battery Wagner, (not the sea-face salient, which we subsequently carried).  They went forward to that charge 650 strong, commanded throughout by white officers.  Colonel Shaw's last word to the major commanding the left wing of his regiment as he went to the front was, "We shall take the fort or die there;  good-bye."  I would not disparage the brave rush of that colored regiment to death.  It was, however, received not undue but disproportionate attention from historians.  They ran forward at the "double-quick", with a magnificent courage;  we still remaining where we were, standing in column on the beach.  As they approached the ditch they met a withering fire:  the garrison outnumbered them two to one.  The rebels had exhumed their buried cannon and remounted them, and were at their posts behind the parapets, defiant as ever.  Before that fire of grape and shrapnel and musketry the intrepid regiment of black men broke:  a few of them followed their brave Colonel through the ditch and up the bank behind it, and planted their flag in the most gallant manner upon the ramparts:  there Colonel Shaw was shot through the heart, and fell back dead in the ditch:  many of his brave colored soldiers died by his side, but others were seized with a furious panic, and fled to the rear in dismay.
     During their assault and at the moment of their repulse Strong's "fighting brigade" was still standing -- in column by company -- upon the beach, awaiting the command to go forward.  Putnam's brigade was also formed in their rear.  In number they were the finest soldiers of the volunteer armies, for they been two years in training;  in spirit they were the choicest youth of the Republic, for they had rushed to arms at her first call for help.  There they stood as night settled down upon them -- a mile of men massed in solid column in the gathering gloom;  their faces were blanched, for they knew now that Fort Wagner was not evacuated nor disabled by the bombardment, and that its garrison -- standing behind embankments which, "if no longer offensive, were still defiant" -- was ready to give them also a more deadly reception.  It may be doubted if any man who never has known the experience of a moment like that can conceive it.  With blanched cheeks, indeed, but with undaunted hearts in face of imminent death, they determined that night to do their duty.  The Sixth Connecticut was in advance: the Forty-eighth New York was next -- just at that fatal point in the column, as it proved, where the direct fire and the enfilade would focus.  The Third New Hampshire, Seventy-sixth Pennsylvania, and Ninth Maine followed.  Suddenly the voice of General Strong rang clear as he shouted the command, "Column, forward !  double-quick march!"  the forward on the full run they rushed.  The earth shook beneath their tread:  the storm lulled, the very sea beside them seemed to grow quiet:  the cannon firing of all the batteries from all the ship suddenly ceased; grim and formidable the banks of Wagner lay before them;  and there was silence everywhere, except that Sumpter kept up her fire incessantly, and the "tramp," "tramp," "tramp," of the onrushing column, and by their side the gentle swash of the sea.
     When we had gone twelve hundred yards and the head of the column was almost to the ditch, suddenly the parapets were alive with men:  they "yelled;"  they fired all their muskets and their cannon straight into our faces.  It was as if the deepest pit of hell had vomited its hottest fires upon you.  It was as light as day, and that noble column reeled and swayed and fell, shot through with grape and canister and shrapnel -- the deadliest missiles of cruel war:  these crushed their way through the bared breasts of that dauntless column of loyal blue, and leveled it to the earth.  Oh, it was pitiful!  The air was on fire everywhere, and the fire seemed to have voices that now moaned and now cheered, and now cried with pain;  the deadly volleys followed each other faster than i can wrote of them;  the dead and dying were piled in heaps, heroic, far up that fatal slope;  the sea moaned, the thunder muttered in the sky.  It grew dark suddenly, and only the eye of God saw the survivors of that shattered column pushing on toward the fort.  Here was one, yonder another, ten steps away a third -- all that were left standing of the solid columns that had melted away in the fires;  but they did not halt, did not retreat -- they pressed on.  Those in the rear followed them, trampling down their dead and dying comrades, stumbling over wire entanglements as they rushed in the dark towards the fort.  We struck the bank at its highest point, at what was called the southeast bastion.  The Thirty-first North Carolina defended that position;  they have been falsely accused by the Confederate commanders of cowardice.  Beauregard claims they "disgracefully abandoned their position;"  General Taliaferro, that "the southeast bastion was weakly defended."  It was a cruel and unjust accusation.  They stood to their guns as long as they could.  The reader will discover another reason for their panic and retreat:  the "fighting brigade" was irresistible.  It reached the moat, crossed it.  Many fell there under the terrible enfilades;  other impaled their feet on spikes and blades of steel:  but the rest climbed up that first  bank, and step by step, with swords drawn and bayonets fixed, without the firing of a single shot, without the speaking of a single word, drove the enemy back, captured their guns, their magazine, followed them as they fled in terror across the terre-plein, drove them over the superior slope;"  and at last a mere handful of the, but all that remained of the "fighting brigade," stood triumphant upon the rebel ramparts, and the strongest bastion of Fort Wagner was taken.  Then there rang a great shout of victory over the sea, but it was lost in the shrieks of pain that followed it around the world.
     History has never been just to that assault:  it has written it down as a failure, and insisted that it was repulsed.  It is a remarkable fact that only the Confederate writers have acknowledged that Strong's brigade, as a matter of fact, DID CARRY THE STRONGEST BASTION OF THE FORT, AND HELD IT FOR MORE THAN THREE HOURS.
   What did the enemy think of us as we rushed towards them that night?  Let me quote again from the narrative of  General Taliaferro:

"The Grand Assault" "A dark mass of the enemy's columns, brigade after brigade, were seen in the fading twilight to approach.  Line after line was formed and then came the rush.  Orders were given to Gaillard to hold his fire and deliver no direct shot.  As the assaulting columns came on they were met with withering volleys of McKethan's direct and Gaillards cross fire, and by the direct discharge of the shell-guns, supplemented by the frightful enfilading discharges of the lighter guns upon the right and left.  It was terrible:  but with an unsurpassed gallantry the Federal soldiers breasted the storm and rushed onward to the glacis. The Confederates, with the tenacity of bull-dogs and a fierce courage which was aroused to madness by the frightful inaction to which they had been subjected, poured from the ramparts and embrasures sheets of flame and a tempest of lead and iron:  yet their intrepid assailants rushed on like the waves of the sea by whose shores they fought;  they fell by hundreds, but they pushed on, reeling under the frightful blasts that almost blew them to pieces, up to the Confederate bayonets.  The southeast bastion was weakly defended (?), and into it a considerable body of the enemy made their way... But they left near a thousand dead around the fort."

 

The above tribute from the pen of the Confederate General who commanded Battery Wagner that night to the courage of the undaunted men who faced his deadly fire is the tribute of a brave man to brave men.  The assaulting columns everywhere else but at that single point, where the "fighting brigade" won its renown, were beaten back and retreated.  The men who succeeded in capturing the sea-face bastion were the survivors of the Sixth Connecticut and Forty-eighth New York (the two regiments that had led the column), and a handful of brave fellows from other regiments who had had the courage to join them.  The losses had been terrible:  Beauregard estimates them at three thousand.  I have been unable to find a detailed report from any Federal authority of the casualties;  the most moderate authorities estimate them as about two thousand men.  I quote once more from the narrative of the Confederate General Jones, in order that the reader may see this great assault from every side.  His estimate of the losses is believed to be unexaggerated.  The account now quoted begins at the time we started upon the assault.

"Half the ground to be traversed before reaching Wagner was undulating with sand-hills, which afforded some shelter, but no so much as to prevent free and easy movement;  the other half smooth and unobstructed up to the ditch.  Within easy range of Wagner the marsh encroached so much on the firm sand of the island as to leave but a narrow way between it and the water.  A few stirring words were addressed by the officers to their troops, and the men responded with cheers.

"THE ASSAULT. "About half-past seven the assaulting column was hurled against Wagner, with orders to use the bayonet only, the Federal artillery continuing their fire over their heads as long as it could be done without risk to their own men.  The Confederates at their posts were straining their eyes to catch through the deepening twilight the first glimpse of the enemy.  When the head of the column came into view, a rapid fire of grape and canister was opened, the fire from James Island batteries was poured in on the flank.  Sumter and Gregg, firing over Wagner, plunged their shot into the advancing column and the parapets of Wagner were lit up by a line of infantry fire.

"A HARD TASK IN HAND. " The advancing column pressed defiantly forward, breasting the storm of iron and lead which was rapidly thinning their ranks.  The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts broke and fled, large bodies of it falling upon and with violence forcing their was through the ranks of the advancing column, greatly heightening the general confusion.
"The storm of fire from Wagner had strewn the ditch and glacis with killed and wounded.  A few of the bravest of the different regiments, notably the Forty-eighth New York and the Sixth Connecticut, continued to press forward, bearing their colors and striving to reach the ditch, and mount the parapet;  but the brigade had been hopelessly repulsed;  its gallant commander, General Strong, was mortally wounded, as was Colonel Chatfield.  Colonel Shaw of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts was killed, and many other officers killed and wounded.  So heavy was the fire and so great was the disorder, that General Seymour saw the necessity of immediate support and accordingly dispatched his Assistant Inspector-General, Major Plympton of the Third New Hampshire, to order up Colonel Putnam with his supporting brigade.  To his amazement Colonel Putnam positively refused to advance, because, as he explained, he had been ordered by General Fillmore to remain where he was.

"THE FIRST BRIGADE IN CONFUSION. " In the mean time the First Brigade was urged on with admirable spirit and gallantry by General Strong, who had been assured of prompt support.  But the destructive fire from Wagner was more than his men could stand.

"PUTNAM'S  CONDUCT. "What were Colonel Putnam's feelings in the mean time perhaps will never be known, but may with much certainty be conjectured.  He was a gallant young officer, and could not stand idly by at the head of a fine brigade and see the command of his classmates and intimate friends cut to pieces.'  After a disastrous delay and without orders,' says General Seymour, 'he led his brigade forward and pressed on to the assault of the southeast angle through a destructive fire.'

"AN UNGUARDED BASTION. "It seems that the terrible bombardment of eleven hours had demoralized the Thirty-first North Carolina Regiment.  It did not respond to the call to man the ramparts;  the southeast bastion and sea-front, to the defense of which it had been assigned, was therefore unguarded.  Colonel Putnam and a part of his brigade crossed the ditch, which had been nearly filled with sand by the long bombardment, mounted the parapet and a hundred of more men gained possession of the southeast bastion."

 
     This mistake of attributing to Colonel Putnam's brigade the capture of the bastion, General Jones, in a private letter to the writer, says he was led to make by the report of General Seymour.  The fact was that STRONG'S BRIGADE took the bastion, and although Putnam died within it, gallantly coming to its relief, one regiment of his brigade -- by the mistaken volley elsewhere described -- was the unhappy cause  of its final loss.
     The account continues:

 
"Seeing the advantage gained by Colonel Putnam, General Seymour had just dispatched an order by Major Plympton to General Stevenson to advance with his brigade to Colonel Putnam's support when he too was severely wounded.  Before he was carried from the field he repeated the order to General Stevenson to advance, but the order was not obeyed - why, does not appear.

"THE CONFEDERATE LOSS. "The Confederate loss was only one hundred and seventy-four -- surprisingly small, thanks to the sheltering capacity of the sand-works.  The loss on both sides had been unusually heavy in commissioned officers.  Among the Confederate killed were Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Simkins, First South Carolina Infantry; Captain W. H. Ryan of the Charleston battalion;  Captain W. T. Tatem, First South Carolina Infantry; and Lieutenant G. W. Thompson, commanding company Fifty-first North Carolina.  Major David Ramsay of the Charleston battalion was severely wounded.  Lieutenant-Colonel Simkins, as Chief of Artillery, had directed the operations of that arm with admirable skill and daring, and when the assault commenced mounted the parapet to aid and encourage the infantry.  "There, on the ramparts, in the front, this admirable soldier and accomplished gentleman sealed his devotion to out cause by an early but most heroic death."

"THE UNION LOSS. The Federal loss has not yet been officially ascertained.  General Taliaferro estimated it at not less than two thousand -- perhaps much more.  General Beauregard in his official report says their loss must have been three thousand, as eight hundred bodies were interred in front of Battery Wagner on the following morning.
     "In a letter of the 20th to Admiral Dahlgren General Gillmore tells him that during the ten days from the beginning of his operations he had lost thirty-three per cent of his troops in killed, wounded, missing, and sick.  He had commenced with somewhat more than thirteen thousand on Morris and Folly Islands, and his tri-monthly report for the 20th of July shows an aggregate sick on those tow islands of twelve-hundred and forty-one.  It would seem therefore that General Beauregard's estimate was not excessive.

 
The defense of Fort Wagner was signalized by a courage that was equal and a military skill that was superior to the assault.  General Seymour was wounded.  General Gillmore seems to have been too far to the rear to have brought forward reinforcements promptly, and the brave General Strong did his best to bring other regiments in support of the Sixth Connecticut and Forty-eighth New York to hold the salient they had taken, but so terrible had been the slaughter that no one would heed him;  finally he placed himself at the head of the battalion composed of what remained of the immortal Seventh Connecticut, and to them he made his last appeal.  Here Strong fell, mortally wounded, before he could come to our relief, and the command of the column passed rapidly from one to another, until every Federal Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel present at the front had fallen;  and when it finally broke, the ranking officer of the brigade was Major Plympton of the Third New Hampshire, who led part of its shattered fragments back into the gathering gloom.
     The Second Brigade, commanded by Colonel Putnam of the Seventh New Hampshire, did their best to reinforce us in the fort, making a furious charge;  but there had been unfortunate delays;  it was now pitch-dark, and they were beaten back by the enfilades.  Colonel Putnam himself was killed just as he reached the fort;  his regiment, the Seventh New Hampshire, distinguished itself.
     It was late in the night when the last shattered regiments finally recoiled under the terrible fire;  their retreat was one of unspeakable horror.  From the ramparts behind them a murderous fire of grape and canister followed them on their way back to the Union lines.  Men fell by scores on the parapets and rolled back into the ditch;  many were drowned n the water, and others smothered by their own dead or wounded companions falling upon them;  some dragged themselves to the rear on their hands and knees through the sand.  Perhaps in all the history of our war a more ghastly scene was never witnessed that that on the beach and glacis of Fort Wagner that night, where, piled on one another in ditches, with bleeding wounds, parched with thirst, writhing in pain, still under the terrible fires of batteries that were not silenced, and lying in ridges where the enfilade had ploughed them down, more than a thousand Union soldiers awaited the coming of the day.    The Confederate claim to have buried next morning eight hundred dead upon the ocean beach.  Among the  killed were Colonels Putnam of the Seventh New Hampshire and Shaw of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, and Lieutenant-Colonel James. M. Green of the Forty-eighth New York.  Among the mortally wounded were Brigadier General George C. Strong, the commander of the "fighting brigade," and Colonel Chatfield of the Sixth Connecticut.  Among the seriously wounded were General Seymour, Colonels Barton (Forty-eighth New York), Jackson, and Emery.  But these are only the names of the more prominent general and field officers.  In the Forty-eighth, in addition to Colonel Barton (he was severely wounded in the thigh) and Lieutenant-Colonel Green (he was shot dead inside the fort on the "superior slope"), Captains Farrell and Hurst and Lieutenant Edwards were killed and Captain Paxson and Lieutenant Fox mortally wounded;  Captains Lockwood, Elfwing, Swartwout, and Coan, and Lieutenants Miller, Barrett, Taylor, and Acker, were wounded.  The Forty-eighth went into that assault with eight companies and nearly five hundred men, and with sixteen officers.  The next morning but eighty-six men answered to the roll-call.  Fifteen of the sixteen officers were killed or wounded.  Such mortality was unparalleled in the war.  It was a very deluge of death through which those immortal columns had tried to fight their way to victory:  and they did it.
     For now it remains for me to record a hitherto unwritten chapter of history.  A mere chronicler of the deeds of a single regiment, and not a professional military historian, might be deemed presumptuous to pretend to contribute new facts to history;  but it is as true as lamentable, that no one has yet attempted to write with any fulness the history of the assault on Fort Wagner.  Fragments of records of the deeds of certain regiments have been published, but the career of our armies in the  whole Department of the South yet awaits a competent historian.  The confusion of that night assault was so great, the final disaster so overwhelming, the chief participants all dead or disabled, the only person capable of telling the entire story captured, marched away to rebel prisons, and destined not to return for months and years, and the general-in-chief of the command seemingly ignorant to this day of what actually transpired on the parapets of Wagner in the darkness of that awful night -- these may be the causes why this history has unwritten;  but that it should be reserved for Confederate military writers to first acknowledge a deed of unexampled valor by Federal soldiers nineteen years after its occurrence, is certainly noteworthy.  My authorities for the remarkable narrative I am now about to relate are the Confederate General Taliaferro, the memories of my comrades, and my own.

(continued in Part 3)


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Index and Introduction
Preferatory Letter  by Abraham J. Palmer
Chapter    I     II     III     IV     V   VI    VII    VIII    IX    X     XI
Roster and Record    Company A   B   C     D    E    F    G    H    I    K    Band
Stories of the 48th not in the book
Illustrations

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