 |
| Fort Wagner at the Point of assault.1 |
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[205]
shot dead, a short distance from the fort, and fell among the slain of his faithful dusky followers.
Near him General Strong and Colonel Chatfield were mortally wounded; and Colonels Barton, Green, and Jackson were severely so, at the heads of their regiments, while many other officers of lower grades and scores of men were killed or maimed.
The bereaved brigade, fearfully shattered and unable to continue the contest, fell back under Major Plympton, of the Third New Hampshire.
Very few of the colored troops, whose bravery and fortitude had been well tested, remained unhurt, and these were led away by Lieutenant Higginson, a mere lad, into the
sheltering gloom.
On the repulse of the first brigade of assailants, the second and smaller one, commanded by Colonel H. L. Putnam, of the Seventh New Hampshire, acting as brigadier-general, hurried forward and resumed the assault vigorously.
This brigade was composed of Putnam's own regiment, the Sixty-second and Sixty-seventh Ohio, commanded respectively by Colonels Steele and Voorhees, and the One Hundredth New York, under Colonel Dandy.
For half an hour these brave men continued the assault unflinchingly, though losing fearfully every moment.
Many of them scaled the parapet, got into the fort, and there fought hand to hand with the garrison, not only in getting in, but in getting out again.
Finally, when their brave leader, Colonel Putnam, was killed at the head of his troops, and nearly all of his subordinate commanders were slain or wounded, and no supports were at hand, the remains of the brigade, like the first, were led away into the gloom, and the assault ceased.
The contest was too unequal.
The Confederate garrison was in full force, and did not lose, in that fearful struggle, over one hundred men, while the Nationals, marching up uncovered toward the fort, lost a. little more than fifteen hundred men. The Confederates said they buried six hundred bodies of the Unionists.
Among them was that of Colonel Shaw, which was thrown into a deep trench that was filled above him with the slain of his colored troops, and so they were buried.2
1 this shows the land-front of the Fort, with the sally-port, near which Colonel Shaw was killed.
2 The deaths of Colonels Shaw and Putnam caused the most profound sorrow, not only in the army, but. throughout the country. Colonel Shaw was only twenty-seven years of age when he gave his life to the cause of Right and Justice. He was son of Francis G. Shaw, of Staten Island, New York, and when the war broke-out was a member of the New York Seventh Regiment, so conspicuous in the movement for opening the way to Washington through Maryland. See chapter 18, volume I. He was with his regiment in those opening scenes of the war, and then received a commission in the Second Massachusetts, in which he did brave service, and had narrow escapes from death in the battles of Cedar Mountain and Antietam. He was appointed colonel of the first regiment of colored troops raised in Massachusetts, and at the head of these he fell just as he gave the word, “Onward, boys!” He is spoken of as one possessed of a most genial nature; of “manners as gentle as a woman's; of a native refinement that brooked nothing coarse; and of a clear moral insight that no evil association could tarnish.” Because he commanded negro troops the Confederates hated him; and they foolishly thought they had dishonored him when, as it was savagely proclaimed, his body had been “buried in a pit under a heap of his niggers.”
Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, who was about the same age as Shaw, was a young man of most exemplary character and great promise. He was a graduate of West Point Military Academy, and had reached the rank of captain in the army when the war broke out. He shared the unlimited confidence and respect of General Scott, who, in the spring of 1861, made him his messenger to carry important military papers into the Southern States and to Fort Pickens. He was engaged in laying out the fortifications of Washington in the autumn of that year, when he was appointed Colonel of the Seventh New Hampshire Volunteers. With these he went boldly to the assault of Fort Wagner, and there became a martyr to the cause of Justice and Civil Liberty. His countrymen will always delight to honor his memory.
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.