This day in Charleston
4 entries · 1863
Work went on day and night in the first parallel: the palisading and boom completed, three emplacements finished for Requa rifle batteries — one on the extreme left flanking the whole obstacle, two on the right to enfilade the beach. Having been driven off Wagner twice, the Federals were now fortifying against the sortie they expected.
Major Brooks’ journal, OR I, 28, Pt. 1
Federal guns bombarded Legare’s Point on James Island — one of the diversions that ran alongside the Morris Island siege to keep the Confederates from concentrating.
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 28, Pt. 1
Charleston’s report of Robert Gould Shaw’s death appeared two days after the assault, in the Mercury’s miscellaneous column: “Colonel Shaw, of Boston, who commanded the 54th Massachusetts (negro) regiment, was killed on our parapet. The Lieutenant Colonel of the same regiment, surrendered his sword to Colonel Gaillard.” He was buried in the mass grave with his men; his father refused every later proposal to move him.
Charleston Mercury, 20 July 1863, p. 2, “Facts, Incidents, Etc.”
The Mercury’s account of 18 July: sixty-five heavy guns and eight mortars against Battery Wagner, an estimated nine thousand shells in eleven hours, the reports at one point averaging twenty-seven a minute — and the garrison, safe in its bombproofs, with four killed and fourteen wounded by seven in the evening. The paper understood exactly what the bombardment had been for: to unfit the defenders “for the expected night’s work.” It failed.
Charleston Mercury, 20 July 1863, p. 2, “The Struggle for Morris Island”
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.