This Day in Civil War History July 18th, 1863 Assault of Battery Wagner

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/assault-of-battery-wagner-and-death-of-robert-gould-shaw ^

[mainepatsfan]

Jul 18, 1863:

Assault of Battery Wagner and death of Robert Gould Shaw

On this day, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and 272 of his troops are killed in an assault on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw was commander of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, perhaps the most famous regiment of African-American troops during the war.

Fort Wagner stood on Morris Island, guarding the approach to Charleston harbor. It was a massive earthwork, 600 feet wide and made from sand piled 30 feet high. The only approach to the fort was across a narrow stretch of beach bounded by the Atlantic on one side and a swampy marshland on the other. Union General Quincy Gillmore headed an operation in July 1863 to take the island and seal the approach to Charleston.

Shaw and his 54th Massachusetts were chosen to lead the attack of July 18. Shaw was the scion of an abolitionist family and a veteran of the 1862 Shenandoah Valley and Antietam campaigns. The regiment included two sons of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the grandson of author and poet Sojourner Truth.

[mainepatsfan]

[C19fan]

Give ‘Em Hell 54th!

[LS]

It's interesting that Howard Zinn, who doesn't cover ANY battles in his "history" of the Civil War in the book People's History of the United States implies that one of Lincoln's goals with the Emancipation Proclamation was to replenish the depleted Union manpower reserves with black soldiers. As the last paragraph notes, this is absurd. Neither Union nor Confederate military officers thought blacks could fight and it was precisely their performance here that began to convince some otherwise. So it is ridiculous to think that Lincoln was freeing slaves in order to make them soldiers when no one thought they could fight.

[SC Swamp Fox]

South Carolina
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[C19fan]

Zinn was a POS “historian”.

[C19fan]

The zip-zag line parallel to the coast I am assuming were the siege works.

[centurion316]

As the map points out, the site of Fort Wagner has been claimed by the sea, but its role in the defense of Charleston can be plainly understood by a visit to Morris Island. Also worth visits are James Island and Sullivan’s Island. The union campaign against Charleston was truly a combined campaign, with the Navy and Army cooperating and coordinating their activities. If you only go to Ft. Sumter, you miss much of this. As an added bonus, Sullivan’s island is where American patriots inflicted major damage on the British fleet attempting to seize Charleston during the Revolution.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Out in front (and to the right) of the Massachusetts New State House (built late in the 18th c) there's a monument to the 54th. At one time only the names of the white officers were on it, but later the names of the black soldiers were added. 54th Mass Thanks mainepatsfan. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[SC Swamp Fox]

At 7:45 p.m., the attack commenced. Yankee troops had to march 1,200 yards down the beach to the stronghold, facing a hail of bullets from the Confederates. Shaw's troops and other Union regiments penetrated the walls at two points but did not have sufficient numbers to take the fort. Over 1,500 Union troops fell or were captured to the Confederates' 222.

Brutal. There would have very little or no cover between the sea and the marsh. Anyone that has ever been to our beaches knows how difficult it is to walk through the dry, sugar-like sand up by the dunes. Moving down to the firmer, damp sand closer to the surf would have exposed them to more direct fire from the fort.

[C19fan]

Curious why the Union did not try to dig the trenches closer to Battery Wagner.

[cowboyway]

Give ‘Em Hell 54th!

Give ‘Em Go To Hell 54th!

There. Fixed it for ya, yank.

[Non-Sequitur]

Probably because it was a flat, exposed beach and because beach sand doesn’t lend itself to constructing trenches.

[Non-Sequitur]

One of the many historical inaccuracies of the movie “Glory” was that the attack on Wagner was in a southernly direction - ocean on the left - when the actual attack was in a northernly direction - ocean on the right.

[r9etb]

Brutal. There would have very little or no cover between the sea and the marsh....

The First World War might have been a lot different had the Europeans taken the trouble to learn a few lessons from the Civil War.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The First World War might have been a lot different had the Europeans taken the trouble to learn a few lessons from the Civil War.

They did, along with the lessons of the Franco-Prussian War. Units were no longer standing in massed formations firing in volley followed by a bayonet charge. The problem is that the technology had advanced even faster. Civil War officers never had to deal with machine guns, modern artillery, poison gas or anything else that characterized WW1. The biggest lesson that they took from the Civil War, in fact, could be seen in the defining characteristic of The Great War: when trying to hold a position and faced with overwhelming firepower, dig. There's not a lot of difference between the trenches of Petersburg and the trenches of the Somme.