USA > New York > The history of the Forty-eighth regiment New York state volunteers, in the war for the union. 1861-1865 > Part 9
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" GALLANTRY OF THE SEVENTH CONNECTICUT.
"The Seventh Connecticut was particularly distinguished on this occasion. Unsupported, and when there seemed no hope of success, some of the men persisted with great daring in their efforts to force an entrance into the work. One brave man sprang to the parapet in front of a thirty-two-pounder, double-charged with grape-shot. Lieu- tenant Gilchrist of South Carolina, in command of the gun. struck by the man's fearless bearing, called to him to come in before the gun was fired. As quick as thought the man's rifle was levelled and a ball whizzed by Gilchrist's head. The discharge of the gun followed, and the man was hurled across the ditch a mangled corpse. This regi- ment had been the first to enter Fort Pulaski when it was captured the year before, and the officers and men had behaved with much kindness towards Colonel Olmstead and his men who were captured on that occasion. Among the prisoners captured at this time were many of this regiment, who recognized their former prisoners, call- ing them by name and were received by them with as much kind consideration as the circumstances permitted.
"THE FEDERAL LOSS.
"General Strong in his official report to General Gillmore, made on the day of the assault, states that his loss that morning was eight officers and three hundred and twenty-two non-commissioned officers and privates. Among the severely wounded was Lieutenant-Colonel Rodman of the Seventh Connecticut. Captain Gray, who succeeded
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to the command of the battalion of the Seventh Connecticut, reports that one hundred and ninety-one men of the battalion went to the assault and that one hundred and three of them were killed, wounded, and missing, and he adds that their mess contained eleven officers that morning before the assault and but four after it.
"The Confederate loss in the assault was one officer and five en- listed men killed, and one officer and five enlisted men wounded."
After the repulse of July 11th, General Gillmore and Ad- miral Dahlgren held a consultation, and it was determined to erect batteries and to level the parapets of Fort Wagner by a bombardment before it was again attempted to carry it by assault.
The very next day work began-battery-building across the island, 1350 yards from the Confederate fort ; and day and night for the next week the work was pushed forward. Guns and mortars were brought from the batteries on Folly Island and mounted on the works on Morris Island. Twen- ty-six guns were soon in position. They were three-inch rifle pieces, 10-pounder Parrott's, 30 pounder Parrotts, 20- pounder Parrotts, and eight-inch siege mortars. Battery Wagner was mostly armed with what the rebels called sea- coast howitzers-guns which at short range upon assaulting columns were capable of the most deadly work. Lines of rifle-pits were thrown across the island in front of our bat- teries and were constantly being advanced, and duty in the rifle-pits now became a fiery ordeal to the men. The guns of Fort Wagner were never silent.
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From Fort Johnson, also on James Island, from Fort Sum- ter, and Battery Gregg they converged upon our lines a most deadly fire. But the work went steadily on from the Lith to the ISth of the month, building batteries, mounting guns, and preparing for the great bombardment and the great assault. The regiment remained in its position, among the sand-hills in the rear of the batteries when the men were not on picket. This chapter may well conclude with an account of the only incident of any moment that befell us before the fatal assault of July ISth. In the night of the 13th or the early morning of the 14th the enemy made
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a sortie upon our picket-lines, which happened at the time to be manned by Companies C and D of the Forty-eighth. These companies had three telescopic rifles, with which from the rifle-pits they were able to pick off the gunners and so to silence the guns on Wagner. The sortie was supposed to have been made because of their exasperation on that account. A Confederate soldier, however, whom the writer met on his recent visit to Charleston, and who participated
in it, assured him that it was made .rather to test the strength of our lines. The commander of the sortie him- self asserted that it was for the further purpose of capturing two or three prisoners, from whom General Beauregard wished to seek information concerning the number of our forces. The sortie was under the command of Major Rion of the Seventh South Carolina battalion, and his party con- sisted of 150 men. They came down upon our picket with a rush and a yell, and a hand-to-hand struggle in the dark- ness ensued. The Confederates call it a reconnoissance, but it was an expensive one to them. They acknowledge the loss of two killed, nine wounded, and three missing; but the loss must have been much greater. In the midst of the mêlée a rebel sergeant tried to capture Lieutenant John M. Tantum ; but that stalwart soldier simply threw his arms around the rebel. lifted him up, and carried him bodily to the rear, a prisoner. Our losses were one killed, two wounded. and two taken prisoner ; one of the wounded was the writer's bunk-mate at Fort Pulaski, Stacy K. Duffle : he was shot in the leg after he had surrendered. After the mêlée he was borne on a stretcher down the beach to the hos- pital ; he died of his wound. The two prisoners were Pri- vates John L. Wilgus of Company D and James A. Nesbitt of Company C. Eight months afterward, the writer stood by the side of Wilgus when he died in the prison-hospital at Richmond. He had been perhaps the most religious man of Company D, and the leader of the weekly prayer- meetings, and to the hymns that he had sung that com- pany was indebted for their well-known sobriquet of the " Die-no-mores."
CHAPTER VI. Fort Wagner-July 18, 1863.
"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-The Three Assaults -Charge of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts-Their Re- pulse-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 Putnam's Brigade in Support-Its Failure-Lieutenant-Colonel Green Killed-Colonel Bar- ton Wounded-Captains Farrell and Hurst Killed-Lieutenant Edwards Killed-Captain Paxson and Lieutenant Fox Mortally Wounded-The Defence of the Captured Bastion till Midnight-The Mistaken Vol- ley from the Rear-A Costly Blunder-Calis for Reinforcements-Why they Never Came -- " llolding the Fort"-Heroic " Privates"-The Midnight Surrender-Account of Charles Cowley-Account of Confeder- ate 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.
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'B ATTERY WAGNER." as it was called by the Confed- erates (" Fort" Wagner by the Federals), was located by General Pemberton in 1862, but it was greatly enlarged and strengthened by General Beauregard, who succeeded Pem- berton in the command of the Confederate forces in the fall of that year. He added traverses between its land-guns, three heavy guns to its sea-face, and built the enormous bomb- proofs which so successfully sheltered its garrisons through the several bombardments. Its precise situation was three quarters of a mile south of Cummings Point on Morris Island, and one and a half miles from Fort Sumter. It ran from the sea to Vincent's Creek across a narrow point of
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the island. It had a bastioned front, and was so strongly constructed that, in Beauregard's own words, " It successfully withstood during fifty-eight days the heaviest land and naval attacks known in history." Every device of skilful military engineering was resorted to to render Wagner im- pregnable. Its location was a stroke of genius, for it was not placed at the very narrowest point of the island, but some hundred of yards back of it, so that it was many times wider than the narrowest point in its front over which our ap- proaches had to be made ; yet the earthwork crossed the entire island where it stood, with its flanks perfectly pro- tected by a marsh and creek on its right and the sea on its left. It was provided also with a sluice-gate entrance to the ditch, which retained the water admitted at high-tide. Its garrisons could receive reinforcements and supplies at all times from Cummings Point and Charleston. It was possi- ble also, from the location of other Confederate forts and batteries, to bring to bear a concentrated and cross fire from six separate points upon the space in its front ; and indeed it was through such a fire that both the great assaults were made, and despite it that Fort Wagner was ultimately taken by siege. Its front was protected against assault by a heavy line of palisading, by wire entanglements, torpedoes, and every device known to ferocious warfare. One of these con- trivances of Beauregard's has properly been called " devilish." On the sides of the ditch he placed a hedge of lances and spears with long hickory handles, firmly set in the banks, close to- gether, forming chevaux-de-frise of hooks and blades of steel. Also, along the bottom were laid thick planks, driven full of sharp spikes, whose points were two and three inches high, and were intended to impale the feet of the hardy assailants who might dare to cross the ditch. The fort itself was built entirely of sand, the only wood about it being the platforms and gun-carriages and the palmetto logs used for the roofing of the bomb-proof. It has been declared by competent mili- tary authority to have been almost an impregnable earth- work.
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FORT WAGNER.
I am happy to quote the following additional description of it, from a Confederate authority (General Jones), and especially as it gives what is believed to be a reliable account of its armament and garrison upon that fatal day, July IS, 1863 :
" BATTERY WAGNER.
" Battery Wagner was a field-work, made of sand and riveted with turf and palmetto logs. It extended across the islands from the beach on the east to Vincent's Creek on the west, and presented towards the south a bastioned front of about two hundred and seventy-five yards. The parapets were very thick, and the ditch of moderate depth. The space within the work was from east to west about two hundred yards, and from north to south varied from twenty to seventy-five yards. On this space to the west were quarters for officers and men, built of wood, bomb-proof, capable of sheltering from eight hundred to a thousand men, bomb-proof magazines, and heavy traverses.
" THE ARMAMENT.
"On the 18th of July the armament was one 10-inch columbiad, one 32-pounder riffe, one 42-pounder and two 32-pounder carronades, two naval shell-guns and one 8-inch sea-coast howitzer, four smooth-bore 32-pounders, and one 10-inch sea-coast mortar-in all thirteen, and one light battery. Of those guns only the single 10-inch columbiad was of much effect against the monitors. The Federal land-batteries were beyond the range of nearly all of the other guns in Wagner.
" THE GARRISON AT BATTERY WAGNER.
"On the morning of the 18th the infantry of the garrison consisted of the Thirty-first North Carolina, Lieutenant-Colonel C. W. Knight commanding ; Fifty-first North Carolina, Colonel MeKethen: and the Charleston Battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel P. C. Gaillard. The artillery was Captains W. T. Tatam's and Warren Adams' companies of the First South Carolina regular infantry, acting as artillery ; Captains J. T. Buckner's and W. J. Dixon's companies of the Sixty-third Georgia Heavy Artillery, and Captain De Pass' Light Battery-in all an ag- gregate of about seventeen hundred men. The Charleston Battalion and Fifty-first North Carolina were assigned to the defence of the parapet in the order named from the right along the south front to the gun-chamber opposite the door of the bomb-proof, which was on the left or sea-front. The Thirty-first North Carolina extended along the sea-face from the left of the Fifty-first to the sally-port towards
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Battery Gregg. A part of this regiment (the Thirty-first) was held in reserve on the parade.
" OUTSIDE THE WORK.
"Two companies of the Charleston Battalion, Captain Julius A. Blake commanding, were outside of the work guarding the left gorge and sally-port. Two of Captain De Pass' field-pieces were also outside of the work on the traverse near the sally-port. Colonel E. B. Harris, Chief of Engineers, had that day placed a howitzer on the right of the sally-port, outside of the beach, to co-operate with the guns on the left. To avoid the delay, which in a sudden assault might prove fatal, of assembling the men and marching them in military order to their respective posts, every man was instructed individually as to the exact point which he should occupy, and which, on an order to man the - parapets, he would be required to gain and hold. All of the artillery was under the general command of Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Simkins, Chief of Artillery."
It was in the second and great attempt to carry this earth- work by assault on the night of July 18, 1863, that the Forty-eighth Regiment achieved immortality. There is a model of Fort Wagner prepared under the direction of Gen- eral Gillmore after its capture, and now preserved in the museum of the Military Academy at West Point. Colonel Wheeler, Professor of Engineering, uses it still in teaching his classes of cadets. As an earthwork it was so perfect, that it has come to be a model. That model is harmless- looking as it stands in the museum on the banks of the peaceful Hudson, but the real Fort Wagner was not so: it was the scene of the deadliest onslaught of the war ; of wild and pitiless carnage and blood and disaster, a scene of hate and fury, a spot which resounded with curses and shrieks and dying groans, a sea-shore along which to this day little children never stroll on summer evenings to gather shells, because of the ghastly human bones which every wave tin- earths and washes up.
It was on that strip of barren sand in front of this impreg- nable earthwork that we found ourselves on the morning of July 18, 1863. We had been now for eight days on Morris
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Island. Five formidable batteries had been erected by our forces across the island in our front. The hour was ready for the great bombardment, and early in the morning it be- gan. Dahlgren moved his monitors, ironsides, and gun- boats close up to the fort. and, regardless of the fire both of Sumter and Wagner, all day long poured his heavy shells with terrific effect, into that bank of sand. The ships were the new Ironsides, the monitors Montauk, Wechawken, Patapsco, Nantucket, and Catskill, and the gun-boats Paul Fones, Ottawa, Seneca, Chippewa, and Wissahickon, with six mortar-boats. The land-batteries opened fire at the same time, and a hundred guns (without a moment's intermission through the day) concentrated their fire upon Wagner. General Beauregard's report says. "The enemy's firing was very rapid, averaging fourteen shots per minute, and unpa- ralleled until this epoch in the weight of projectiles thrown." Within eleven hours, more than 9000 shell were hurled at the grim fort. It was a magnificent spectacle as we wit- nessed it from the sand-hills on Morris Island. No one would suppose that a human being, or a bird even, could live for a moment upon that fort. The shells struck the great banks, exploded, and threw the sand high in the air. . They beat the banks shapeless, and carried away nearly sixteen feet of the sand covering the bomb-proof. After a few hours the guns were silenced, and the garrison driven back to their bomb-proofs under ground. The rebel fire from Fort Sumter was kept up, however, all the day.
A new problem in the science of war was destined to be solved that Saturday on Morris Island. It had been de- monstrated at Fort Pulaski that walls of brick could not withstand modern projectiles : would banks of earth and sand successfully resist them ? That was the crucial test of that fiery summer's day. The armament of the fort was of no moment. It was purely a question of passive resistance. and the banks of sand stood the test. The garrison at Fort Wagner on that day consisted of 1700 men-the Charleston battalion on the right, Fifty-first North Carolina in the cen-
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tre, and the Thirty-first North Carolina, in the great south- east bastion on the sea-front. They were under the imme- diate command of General William B. Taliaferro, one of "Stonewall" Jackson's veterans. We are fortunate in pos- sessing from his own pen a graphic account of that day's battle, written and viewed, of course, from his standpoint. He calls the bombardment a " tempest of fire."
"About a quarter past eight in the morning the storm broke : ship 'after ship and battery after battery, and then apparently all together, vomited forth their horrid flame, and the atmosphere was filled with 'deadly missiles. It is impossible for any pen to describe, or for any 'one who was not an eye-witness, to conceive the fatal grandeur of the spectacle. Within the narrow limits of Wagner the sand came down In avalanches. Huge vertical shells and those rolled over by the rico- chet shots from the ships buried themselves and then exploded, rend- ing the earth and forming great craters, out of which the sand and iron fragments flew high into the air. It was a fierce sirocco freighted with iron as well as sand. The sand flew over from the sea-shore from the glacis, from the exterior slope, from the parapet, as it was piled up and lifted and driven by resistless force, now in spray and now almost in waves, over into the work, the men sometimes half- buried by the moving mass. Our chief anxiety was about the maga- zines. The profile of the fort might be destroyed, the ditch filled up, the traverses and bomb-proof barracks knocked out of shape, but the protecting banks of sand would still afford their shelter; but if the coverings of the magazines were blown away and they became ex- posed, the explosion which would ensue would lift fort and garrison into the air and annihilate all in general chaos. They were carefully watched, and reports of their condition made at short intervals. . . . The day wore on : thousands upon thousands of shells and round- shot, shells loaded with balls, shells of guns and shells of mortars, percussion-shells exploding upon impact, shells with graded fusés, every contrivance known to the arsenals of war, leaped into and around the doomed fort; yet there was no cessation. The sun seemed to stand still, and the long midsummer day to know no night. Some men were dead, and no scratch appeared on their bodies: the concus- sion had forced the breath from their lungs, and collapsed them into corpses. . . . The commanding officer was buried knee-deep in sand, and had to be rescued by spades from his imprisonment. The day wore on ; hoars followed, hours of anxiety and grim endurance, but no respite ensued. At last night came-not, however, to herald a cessation
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of the strife, but to usher in a conflict still more terrible. More than eleven hours had passed : the fort was torn and mutilated ; to the outside observer it was apparently powerless, knocked to pieces and pounded out of shape, the outline changed, the exterior slope full of gaping wounds, the ditch half filled up; but the interior still preserved its form and its integrity. Scarred and defaced, it was yet a citadel, which although not offensive was defiant, It was nearly eight o'clock at night, but still twilight, when a calm came, and the blazing circle ceased to glow with flame. The ominous pause was understood : it re- quired no signals to be read by those to whom they were not directed to inform them that the supreme moment was now at hand: it meant-ASSAULT."
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 be- fore, 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 im- petuous 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. Ste- phenson's followed Putnam's. As the day wore on, the ru- mor ran round 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 ga- thering for assault. Aids and orderlies rode up and down. giving rapid orders. General Truman Seymour was in com- mand of the entire assaulting column ; General Strong led his own brigade. Two things now happened-the one of
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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 possibly was, that if glory should be won in that assault, they should share it. Political con- siderations too often outweighed military ones in the war. (The same thing happened again, and with more fatal conse- quences, at the explosion of the Petersburg mine a year afterward.) Perhaps it would have been a spectacle in his- tory 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 sensa- tions as he stood in his place in the ranks, as the night set- tled down upon us and we began to realize the fearfulness of the assault we were about to attempt. To many a gal- lant 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, con- taining 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 pal- metto-logs and sand-bags, where the garrison was hidden in security throughout the bombardment.
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FORT WAGNER.
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 as- sault, 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 especial attention to this fact, for only by bearing it in mind can the student of this brief but sanguinary battle comprehend it.
The first assault was made by the Fifty-fourth Massachu setts, against the curtain of the fort on the left : it failed. The second assault was made by Strong's " fighting brig- ade," against the sea-face bastion in our front : it succeeded. The third assault was made by Putnam's brigade in sup-
FORT WAGNER AT POINT OF FIRST ASSAULT.
port : 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 off the earth.
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