Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

The South Atlantic Coast, 1861–1863 49
was successful; one Confederate general felt “certain of an attack, both from the
Stono and from bays in rear, before or by daylight” on 11 July, but the Union
troops settled down in the rain and heat to “the usual picket and fatigue duty,”
protected by the guns of naval vessels offshore. Confederate pickets were in sight
but too far off for them to tell black Union soldiers from white: they called the
54th Massachusetts “Flat-headed Dutchmen.” “We stood under arms this morning
from just before dawn until half an hour after daylight,” Captain Appleton
recorded on 13 July. “Then I found a clean puddle, took a drink from it and then
bathed in it, and felt better.” 62
To counter the Union move against Charleston, the Confederate command
summoned reinforcements from neighboring states. General Pierre G. T. Beauregard
thought the James Island position “most important,” and it was there
that his troops attacked on 16 July. Union soldiers on the island had gone a
week without tents or a change of clothing. Three companies of the 54th Massachusetts
manned the right of the Union picket line. They fell back, but their
resistance allowed men of the 10th Connecticut on the left of the picket line to
move closer to the water, where the entire force came under covering fire from
Union gunboats. When the Confederates retreated, Union troops recovered the
ground they had lost. Men of the 54th Massachusetts thought at first that the
fourteen dead they had left on the field had been mutilated by the Confederates
but eventually concluded that fiddler crabs had eaten the corpses’ ears
and eyelids. Going over the ground, officers could tell by the position of discarded
cartridge papers that the pickets of the 54th Massachusetts had retired
in good order. “It was pleasing . . . to see the Connecticut boys coming over to
thank our men for their good fighting,” Captain Appleton noted. General Terry
praised “the steadiness and soldierly conduct” of the 54th, but Beauregard
summarized the day’s events in one sentence: “We attacked part of the enemy’s
forces on James Island . . . and drove them to the protection of their gunboats
. . . with small loss on both sides.” The successful defense put the men of the
54th Massachusetts in good spirits, but it was no substitute for potable water.
What was available on James Island came “from horse ponds covered with a
green scum,” was “almost coffee colored and [had] a taste that coffee cannot
disguise,” Captain Appleton wrote. 63
General Gillmore ordered the evacuation of James Island. The men withdrew
through the swamp during the night, “over narrow dikes and bridges . . . mostly
of three planks, but sometimes one and sometimes another would be missing.”
The 54th Massachusetts went two days without food, except for a box of hardtack
that was cast up on the beach. Boats took the regiment first to Folly Island, then
to Morris Island, where a Union force had been preparing for another assault on
62 OR, ser. 1, vol. 28, pt. 1, pp. 428 (“certain of”), 584 (“the usual”); Appleton Jnl, pp. 45, 46
(“Flat-headed”), 47 (“We stood”).
63 OR, ser. 1, vol. 28, pt. 1, p. 755 (Terry), and pt. 2, pp. 192, 194 (“most important”), 203
(Beauregard). Appleton Jnl, pp. 48, 51, 52 (“It was pleasing,” “from horse ponds”). Fiddler crabs
are members of the genus Uca. Three species, U. minax, U. pugilator, and U. pugnax, range from
Florida to Cape Cod. Austin B. Williams, Shrimps, Lobsters, and Crabs of the Atlantic Coast of the
Eastern United States, Maine to Florida (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984),
pp. 472–81.