Originally aired on July 17, 1998 - In part 203 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson describes the July 1863 siege of Charleston that involved the use of blacks in combat from the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.
#203 – Fort Wagner – Siege of Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina underwent the longest siege in the Civil War. Beginning in 1863 and continuing for five hundred and eighty-seven days. A Union army and navy sought to shut down the Confederacy’s principle seaport. One of the high moments in that long besiegement came in July, 1863. It involved something novel in American military annals, mainly, the use of black soldiers in combat.
The first all-black regiment from the North to go to war was the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. It was a showcase unit. Each man carefully handpicked by Abolitionist leaders such as Frederick Douglass. The colonel of the 54th Massachusetts was young Robert Gould Shaw. A member of a prominent Boston family.
The 54th Mass had existed for two months when it was ordered to South Carolina to be part of an attack on Charleston. The Union strategy called for a landing on Morris Island, which was on the southern lip of the entrance to the harbor. Control of the island would neutralize Fort Sumter and give the Union a good position for bombarding Charleston itself.
Federals quickly occupied three fourths of Morris Island. Standing in their path at the northern end of the slip of land was a Confederate bastion. It was called Fort Wagner. High walls of sand and wood stretched across the island. A deep moat protected the parapet and in front of the fort the island narrowed so that any assaulting column would have to pull in its flanks and form a compact mass. That would of course, make an ideal target.
The Confederate garrison consisted of thirteen hundred veteran soldiers and fifteen cannon. To reach the Wagner area Shaw marched his black soldiers through tangled marshlands for two days in pouring rain and without food. The colonel begged his brigade command to give the new regiment a chance to prove itself in battle. Shaw and his men were assigned to lead the attack on Fort Wagner by some six thousand Federals.
Throughout the morning and afternoon of July 18, Union ships bombarded Fort Wagner. Near five pm the 54th Mass and other Union regiments surged forward across an open beach. Southerners unharmed by the naval fire opened on the blue-clad infantry with concentrated musketry and artillery. Colonel Shaw fell early. Killed by a bullet through the heart. Many of his blacks made it to the moat, crossed over and scrambled up the sandy slope of the main parapet.
For an hour, with darkness descending vicious hand-to-hand combat occurred. Then the beaten Federals gave way. Survivors drifting back to their starting point. Confederate casualties in the lopsided fight were only a hundred and seventy-four men. Of six thousand Billy Yanks in the attack, one thousand five hundred were killed or wounded. The 54th Massachusetts led all Federal units in number of casualties. It lost one hundred killed, a hundred and forty-five wounded and more than one hundred captured. The total represented half of the regiment’s strength.
Confederates buried Colonel Shaw with his black troops either out of respect or out of contempt. A Northern effort began to secure Shaw’s body and return it to Boston for a full military burial. Shaw’s father vetoed the idea by saying, “we hold that a soldier’s most appropriate burial place is on the field where he has fallen”.
Fort Wagner brought a wide-spread change in Northern perceptions of black soldiers. A New York newspaper asserted that Fort Wagner “would become such a name for the colored race as Bunker Hill has been for ninety years to the Yankees”. The Atlantic Monthly added, “through the cannon smoke of that dark night the manhood of the colored race shines before many eyes that heretofore would not see”.