Inside Fort Shaw

A wheel-rutted track runs between low sheds and a palisade of sharpened stakes; the ground is churned sand and the horizon is a line of earthwork. The Library of Congress titles it the interior of Fort Shaw on Morris Island.

The name is the reason to look twice. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the 54th Massachusetts was killed on the parapet of Battery Wagner on 18 July 1863 and buried in the common trench with his men; the Federals afterwards put his name on a work of their own on the island where he died. His biography is published among this site's people.