During the bombardment we had concentrated upon our little band forty-four guns and mortars from the land batteries, distant about 1,200 or 2,000 yards, and the heavy guns from the Ironsides, five monitors and five gunboats. . .. The sand was our only protection, but fortunately one shot would fill up the hole made by another, or we should soon have been annihilated. Regimental History.Near dusk the artillery fire slackened and the land troops made ready for the assault. General Seymour commanded the Federal division, made up of Strong's, Putnam's and Stevenson's brigades. General Strong's brigade was in advance. His leading regiment was the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, a negro regiment commanded by white officers. During the bombardment, the Confederate troops had been partly protected in the bombproofs. They now, although the shelling was still murderous, sprang to their posts. Many of the guns of light weight
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At length came the 18th day of July, made memorable by a land and naval bombardment of unusual severity, lasting eleven hours, and followed by a well sustained land assault.
The garrison, under command that day of Gen. W. B. Taliaferro, consisted of the Charleston battalion, assigned to the right of the defenses; the Fifty-first North Carolina, posted at the center; the Thirty-first North Carolina, commanded to hold the left of the work.
The artillery, four companies, was commanded by Lieut.-Col. J. C. Simkins.
The Federal land batteries numbered about forty guns and the ships added twenty more, making probably sixty-four guns of all sorts turned against the fort and its little garrison.
General Seymour, of the Union army, says: ‘From about noon until nightfall the fort was subjected to such a weight of artillery as has probably never before been turned upon a single point’ Lieutenant McKethan of the Fifty-first North Carolina gives the experience of his regiment inside the fort:
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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