[198] letter was Assistant-Surgeon John T. Luck, U. S. A., and it was dated at New York, October 21, 1865:—
To the Editor of the Army and Navy journal:—Sir,—I was taken prisoner by the Rebels the morning after the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, July 19, 1863. While being conducted into the fort I saw Colonel Shaw, of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored) Regiment, lying dead upon the ground, just outside the parapet. A stalwart negro man had fallen near him. The Rebels said the negro was a color-sergeant. The Colonel had been killed by a rifle-shot through the chest, though he had received other wounds. Brigadier-General Haygood, commanding the Rebel forces, said to me: “I knew Colonel Shaw before the war, and then esteemed him. Had he been in command of white troops, I should have given him an honorable burial. As it is, I shall bury him in the common trench, with the negroes that fell with him.” The burial party were then at work, and no doubt Colonel Shaw was buried just beyond the ditch of the fort, in the trench where I saw our dead indiscriminately thrown. Two days afterwards, a Rebel surgeon (Dr. Dawson of Charleston, South Carolina, I think) told me that Haygood had carried out his threat. I am sure I was the last Union man that saw the remains of the brave Colonel.
