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
Wagner, which was still under bombardment by federal guns, was too “warm
[a] spot for a court to sit.” 72
What really happened was different. The court tried only four of the prisoners,
who were thought to have been slaves before the war. Distinguished counsel
represented both sides: Mitchell the defense, the state attorney general the prosecution.
After extensive correspondence between Confederate and South Carolina
officials, both civil and military, the court ruled that “persons engaged as soldiers
in the act of war” were not subject to state slave statutes and the four prisoners
rejoined their comrades. The 54th Massachusetts’ captives spent the rest of the
war in a camp at Florence, South Carolina. At least twelve of the twenty-nine
died in captivity. 73
The second assault on Fort Wagner had been a failure. The 54th Massachusetts’
role did not go unremarked, but the comment was mixed. A New York
Times editorialist noted that the idea that “negroes won’t fight at all” had been
“knocked on the head” but that “the great mistake now is that more is expected of
these black regiments than any reasonable man would expect of white ones.” A
black regiment, the writer went on, “freshly recruited and which had never been
under fire, [was] assigned the advance, which nobody would have dreamed of
giving to equally raw white troops.” Within the Army itself, rumor ran that when
the 54th Massachusetts formed up on the morning after the failed attack, half of
the survivors had lost their rifles. 74
Missing arms or not, there were several reasons for the defeat. In the first
place, Generals Gillmore and Seymour had entertained too great hopes of an
easy capture of Fort Wagner. Gillmore’s artillery had shattered Fort Pulaski’s
masonry the year before, but Fort Wagner’s earthworks were more durable. General
Strong, the brigade commander, was a Massachusetts man and heeded a plea
for active service from another Massachusetts man, Colonel Shaw. In so doing,
Strong placed in advance a regiment so tired that when one of its officers was
wounded in the attack he “went to sleep on the rampart” of the fort. Moreover,
being the largest regiment in the brigade, the 54th Massachusetts formed two
five-company lines, a front too wide to negotiate the spit of land it had to cross
on the way to the fort. This broad front on a narrow beach disarranged both lines
and threw the rearmost men into the regiments immediately behind. Finally, neither
the men nor the officers of the 54th Massachusetts had been under heavy fire
before and some of the officers were very young. Captain Appleton’s memoir
names one who was 19 years old, another who was 18, and two who were 17.
This combination of factors meant that the assault on Fort Wagner would have
required a miracle to succeed. As it was, the Confederates were able to repel an
attacking force that outnumbered them nearly three to one, even though many
of the defenders were too demoralized to offer much resistance. The men of one
72 Appleton Jnl, p. 125 (quotation); Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, p. 97.
73 Howard C. Westwood, “Captive Black Union Soldiers in Charleston—What To Do?” Civil
War History 28 (1982): 28–44 (quotation, p. 40); Emilio, Brave Black Regiment, pp. 298–99.
74 New York Times, 31 July 1863; John C. Gray and John C. Ropes, War Letters, 1862–1865
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 184.