Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

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Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
Like most officers of black regiments, Capt. John W. M. Appleton had served as an
enlisted man in a white regiment. These photographs show him as a private in the
Massachusetts militia and as an officer of the 54th Massachusetts.
Fort Wagner. General Gillmore concentrated his artillery; by nightfall on 17 July,
twenty-five rifled cannon and fifteen siege mortars were trained on the Confederate
works. A heavy rain during the night delayed the opening bombardment until late
the next morning. By the time the 54th Massachusetts landed, late on the afternoon
of 18 July, two Union brigades—a little more than four thousand men—had been
under arms for anywhere from four to seven hours. 64
Gillmore’s report, written weeks later, called Morris Island “an irregular mass
of sand, which, by continued action of wind and sea (particularly the former),” had
accumulated on top of the mud of a salt marsh. The buildup had been gradual: sixty
years earlier, the island had not existed, but wind and sea could subtract as well as
add. Only after the attack of 18 July did Army officers learn that beach erosion had
64 OR, ser. 1, vol. 28, pt. 1, pp. 345–46; vol. 53, pp. 8, 10, 12; Appleton Jnl, pp. 53 (“over narrow”),
54; Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, pp. 65–68. Strength calculated by averaging the strengths of
the 6th Connecticut, 9th Maine, 7th New Hampshire, and 100th New York in OR, ser. 1, vol. 28,
pt. 1, p. 357, and vol. 53, pp. 10–13, and multiplying by nine, the number of regiments in the two
brigades (OR, ser. 1, vol. 28, pt. 1, pp. 346–47). A third brigade that included Montgomery’s 2d
South Carolina was present but did not come into action. Stephen R. Wise, Gate of Hell: Campaign
for Charleston Harbor 1863 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 232–33,
reckons the “Estimated Effective Strength” of the regiments that took part in the attack as 5,020.
But the commanders of the four regiments named above listed a total strength of 1,820, while Wise
gives 2,140 (an overestimate of nearly 17.6 percent).