Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[433] James Island and Sullivan's Island batteries, and from Fort Sumter. But this time there was to be no surprise. As the bombardment relaxed, it was known at Fort Wagner that such a demonstration on the part of the enemy was not without its object; and every man was ordered by Gen. Taliaferro, who commanded the fort, to the parapet to prepare for the expected assault of the enemy.

At dusk the assaulting column was formed on the beach. A regiment of negro soldiers, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, was, for peculiar reasons, put in the extreme advance. There were eleven regiments in solid column As the head of it debouched from the first parallel, a tremendous fire from the barbette guns on Fort Sumter, from the batteries on Cumming's Point, and from all the guns on Fort Wagner, opened upon it. The guns from Wagner swept the beach, and those from Sumter and Cumming's Point enfiladed it on the left. Still the column staggered on within eighty yards of the fort. And now a compact and most destructive musketry fire was poured upon it from the parapet, along which gleamed a fringe of fire. In five minutes the first line of the enemy had been shot, bayoneted, or were in full retreat. The First Brigade, under the lead of Gen. Strong, failed to take the fort. The Second recoiled; and the few troops that had clambered to the parapet, now found the most desperate task to effect a retreat. It was a night black with tempest. Even if they surrendered, the shell of Sumter were thickly falling around them in the darkness, and, as prisoners, they could not be safe until victory, decisive and unquestioned, rested with one or the other belligerent. It was a retreat of untold horrours. Men rolled in the ditch, or dragged their bloody bodies through the sand-hills, on their hands and knees. About midnight there was silence at last; the battle was over; the ocean beach was crowded with the dead, the dying, and the wounded. The loss of the enemy was severe --fifteen hundred and fifty killed and wounded, according to his own statement, which must have been below the truth, as the Confederates buried six hundred of his dead left on the field. Their own loss was not more than one hundred in killed and wounded.

After this second successful defence of Fort Wagner the remainder of the month of July, and the early part of August, were employed by the enemy in erecting siege-works, and mounting heavy siege-guns, preparatory to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, as it was found that Fort Wagner did not interfere with the engineer corps at work. Meanwhile Gen. Beauregard and the Mayor of Charleston issued another urgent appeal to the landed proprietors and others to send in their negroes to work on the fortifications; and the Governor of the State made an even stronger appeal. There was, however, much indifference shown in promptly responding; and though an act of the Legislature had been passed involving a penalty on refusal, many of the planters preferred paying it to allowing their negroes to be so employed.