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

[402] regiment, also captured, were marched through the streets with the Fifty-fourth prisoners to the provost-marshal; ‘thence they were taken to the gloomy jail, and at ten o'clock at night thrust— twenty in all—into a small and filthy room without furniture, lighted with but four panes of glass over the door, and not large enough to find a place for all to lie on the floor. By special orders of General Ripley, the friends were to pass the night with the colored privates instead of the white officers’ captured. It seems most probable that the chaplain's account is correct, and that possibly the Fifty-fourth men may have been confined in Castle Pinckney for a short time, after their surrender to the State authorities, but to be again returned to the jail.

Assistant-Surgeon Luck says that he was in attendance upon our wounded in the hospital. He states that, ‘Regarding the privates of that regiment, fifty-five of those captured were wounded. Many of them died in the hospital at Charleston both before and after being attended to. They were much dejected, and yet bore their sufferings with great bravery. When I was taken from the hospital about thirty-five were yet alive and doing well.’ Speaking of the unwounded he says: ‘They were taken first to Charleston Jail; then the rebel government gave them to the State of South Carolina. . . . While the State of South Carolina held them, they were kept in Castle Pinckney. . . . The negroes were again taken possession of by the rebel government, and when I left Charleston, S. C. (Nov. 9, 1863), they were all in Charleston Jail.’

Accepting the figures of Assistant-Surgeon Luck as correct, that there were fifty-five wounded of the Fifty-fourth, and those of Chaplain Trumbull that twenty were placed in the jail, including himself and Adjutant Camp, leaving eighteen negro soldiers, we find that the captured of the regiment, wounded and unwounded, numbered at least seventy-three men. The roster accounts for seventy-eight men missing or captured; deducting the seventythree accounted for as above, we have a remainder of five men we may suppose to have been killed.

Charleston Jail, for many months the prison of the Fifty-fourth men, stood in about an acre of ground enclosed with a brick wall