Emilio, Luis F., History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry , 1863-1865

General Hatch, having concluded to try to cut the railroad at Ashepoo, sent Brig.-Gen. William Birney with some sixteen hundred men to make the attempt. He landed at the mouth of Mosquito Creek on May 25, advancing about six miles in the evening. The naval vessels landed a force to co-operate on Johassie Island. The steamer Boston, on which were Colonel Montgomery and the Thirty-fourth United States Colored Troops, ran aground and was fired upon by the enemy with artillery, compelling her abandonment and destruction by fire. General Birney's force retired to Port Royal on the 27th.

Maj.-Gen. John G. Foster, a distinguished officer, who graduated from West Point in 1846, took command of the Department May 26. He was no stranger there, for in April, 1861, he was the engineer officer at Moultrie and Sumter, and in January, 1862, brought a large part of the Eighteenth Corps to South Carolina. Throughout the Civil War he suffered from a wound received in Mexico.

As Lieutenant-Colonel Hooper was detailed for courtmartial duty and Captain Emilio as judge-advocate at Hilton Head, on May 29, Captain Bridge took command of Lighthouse Inlet and Capt. T. L. Appleton of Fort Green. During the ensuing night some of our officers perpetrated a great joke on the Johnnies. Making the stuffed figure of a soldier, they took it out in a boat and stood it on top of Block House No. 1, placing an imitation gun in its hands. When morning broke, the Johnnies espied the supposed sentinel, and fired at him for half an hour, through which he seemed to bear a charmed life. When they opened, we replied from Green and Purviance.

Lieutenant Swails, when commissioned, was placed on