previous next
[217]

Chapter 11: Seige of Charleston

Upon returning to their several stations, the Fifty-fourth companies reassumed the old duties. The first noteworthy incident occurred on July 13, when, at noon, six shells passing over the Third Rhode Island Artillery camp, fell into ours, one of which, exploding in a tent, killed Private John Tanner and Musician Samuel Suffhay, both of Company B. We had supposed the location safe from any shell firing. These missiles came from Sullivan's Island, clear across the harbor. A lookout posted on the sand-bluff near by gave warning thereafter when this gun opened, which it did at intervals until the last of August. At such times, day or night, we were obliged to leave the camp for the sea beach. No further casualties occurred, however.

Another example of dislike to colored troops took place on the 15th. Lieut. John S. Marcy, Fifty-second Pennsylvania, when directed to join the Fifty-fourth detail for duty at the Left Batteries, with some of his men, the whole force to be under one of our officers, refused to do so, saying, ‘I will not do duty with colored troops.’ He was arrested and court-martialled, and, by General Foster's order, dishonorably dismissed. Colonel Hallowell returned on the 16th, bringing assurances that the men would soon be paid. With him came as visitors Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, relatives of Quartermaster Ritchie.

Creative Commons License
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.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Sullivan's Island (South Carolina, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
John Tanner (1)
Samuel Suffhay (1)
John Ritchie (1)
John S. Marcy (1)
J. F. Lewis (1)
E. N. Hallowell (1)
John G. Foster (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
August (1)
July 13th (1)
16th (1)
15th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: