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It was all in vain.
The withering fire of canister and musketry broke up the ranks, and the whole column retreated in wild confusion.
General Strong blamed the Seventy-sixth for his failure to carry the fort, because they halted and fell on the ground under ‘the sudden, tremendous and simultaneous fire’ which they met. But that same fire would have had an identical effect upon them if they had not lain down, as it had when they rose and rushed to the charge.
No regiment can preserve its line of assault under the fire of canister from a dozen guns and the continued discharge of 1,000 rifles.
If the two New Hampshire regiments had followed this first assault, and they, in turn, had been followed by still a third column of attack, they might have carried the fort; but to attempt its assault with two regiments and a battalion of four companies was to presume upon the character of its defenders and the strength of its defense.
General Strong reported his loss at 8 officers and 322 non-commissioned officers and soldiers.
Colonel Graham lost 1 officer and 5 soldiers killed, and 1 officer and 5 soldiers wounded.
Capt. C. Werner, of the First Georgia, was the officer killed, and all the casualties in the fort were among the Georgia troops.
Four monitors, lying a mile off, bombarded Wagner on the 10th, and on the morning of that day, Capt. Langdon Cheves, the engineer of Fort Wagner, just after receiving the intelligence of the death of his gallant kinsman, was killed in the fort by a fragment of shell, fired from one of the monitors, the first shot fired at the fort that day. Captain Cheves was an accomplished engineer, a devoted patriot and a gallant soldier.
Battery Wagner was built under his direction, and his name, with those of others hereafter to be mentioned, who gave their lives in its defense, will be forever commemorated in its history.
Gillmore's third demonstration, on July 10th, the attempt to cut the railroad at Jacksonboro, was a failure.
It was made by Col. T. W. Higginson, commanding a
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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