Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[360] which fills with the dead and the dying. But after this effort they withdraw in disorder; their officers are killed while trying to rally them. The troops following them return uselessly to the charge; the fight, bloody for the assailants only, is continued in front of the work in the light of the discharges, without the assailants being able to pass beyond the crest of the glacis. Still, on the right they have obtained a success which might prove decisive. The Thirty-first North Carolina, charged with the task of defending the part of the work resting on the seashore, has cowardly refused to come out of its casemates: the Federals have seized this portion, and if all their forces are brought to bear on that side they will become masters of the position. But the darkness and the tumult of the battle prevent the leaders from perceiving this fact in time. In fact, most of them have fallen: General Strong, Colonel Shaw—a young man of great promise who commanded the black regiment—Colonels Chatfield and Putnam, are killed; Seymour is wounded at the head of the second column. The latter cannot approach the work, for the first column has already been repulsed and riddled in its retreat by the canister from Wagner's cannon, which for the most part have escaped the bombardment as if by a miracle. A new attempt is impossible, and over a hundred Federals who have penetrated into the work are abandoned without any hope of assistance. However, they defend themselves valiantly, repulsing all the attacks made by the garrison, and surrender only in the middle of the night, when the latter is reinforced by a regiment sent in great haste from James Island.

The reverse to the Federals was complete and their losses were considerable. They have never acknowledged the total. The Confederates, who had only twenty-eight men disabled during the bombardment and a hundred and forty-six during the assault, buried six hundred dead Federals. They threw pell-mell into the same grave all the negro soldiers and their white officers, including the body of Shaw, trying thus to inflict a last insult on these champions of abolition. They were mistaken, and were giving, on the contrary, a supreme consecration to the equality of the races for which the latter were contending.