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.As the regiment waited in the dimminglight for word to attack, enemy cannonballs fell and then rolledat their feet. I guess [they kind of expect] we re comin, oneman joked, as recorded in A Voice of Thunder.A half-hour later, the regiment rose to the charge at thedouble quick. The bugle sounded. Over the half mile of MorrisIsland sand the storming blacks led the way, with their colo-nel in the vanguard [front], reported Benjamin Quarles. No The Massachusetts 54th 75The storming of Fort Wagner (above) resulted in devastating losses for the celebratedMassachusetts 54th Regiment, one of the first African-American units in the Unionarmy.Led by Robert Gould Shaw, the soldiers were ordered to attack Fort Wagner, afortification in South Carolina.Although some were able to reach the stronghold souter walls, Union troops were eventually forced to retreat.sentinel [watchman] hoarsely cried out in challenge; from Wag-ner came not a shot. Then madness broke out.Wagner lit up like a volcano,spewing shot and shell over the advancing charge.The regimentstaggered under the shock, the wounded screaming and fallingall about.Those who survived, having somehow forged the fort smoat, had now to gain the parapet, to climb up the sloping sidesof Fort Wagner. But the Rebel fire grew hotter on our right,and a field piece every few seconds seemed to sweep along our 76 AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CIVIL WARrapidly thinning ranks, a black sergeant later wrote, as refer-enced in The Negro s Civil War. Men all around me would falland roll down the scarp into the ditch. Shaw and some of his men reached the top of the para-pet.The colonel was seen there waving his sword and shoutingto his troops, Rally! Rally! An instant later, a bullet piercedShaw s heart, and he fell forward into the fort. I saw his face, asurvivor was quoted as saying, in The Negro s Civil War. It waswhite as snow, but in every line was the courage which led hismen to the very crest of that wall of death. The retreat that followed turned into a mad panic. Unionsoldiers shot their own men, others surrendered, and a few sliddown the embankment to make their way to safety throughhissing bullets and bursting shells, reported Donald Yacovone. When they reached Union lines, the horrified men found therear guard drunk and shooting retreating soldiers, particularlyblacks. GLORY AND PAINIt would take weeks to finally determine how many men werelost at the battle to take Fort Wagner (which later was deter-mined to be virtually impossible to take).When the casualtycount was complete, the results were horrifying and had neverbefore been experienced.Of the estimated 1,700 Confederatesdefending the fort, only 174 were killed.Union forces, on theother hand, lost 1,515.There had been 10 Federal regimentsthat took part in the assault.The Massachusetts 54th was thehardest hit.It had thrown 600 men and 23 officers into the fight,and 247 were killed, wounded, or captured more men thanthe entire Confederate casualty total.The casualties and the assault itself were unnecessary.The failure of white brigades to support the first attack left the54th stranded.Had help come when it should have, the out-come might have been different.Strategically, Fort Wagner, and The Massachusetts 54th 77Charleston itself, might not have been much of a prize. Thedepartment s major military operations, the seizure of Wagner,the invasion of Florida, and the siege of Charleston, proved di-sastrous and pointless. Under a flag of truce, Union commanders searched forColonel Shaw s body.According to an account by John T.Luck,a captured Northerner, Confederate commander Johnson Ha-good told him, I knew Colonel Shaw before the war, and thenesteemed him, as quoted in The Negro in the Civil War. Hadhe been in command of white troops, I should have given himan honorable burial; as it is, I shall burry him in the commontrench with the Negroes that fell with him. When Shaw s father learned of his son s fate, he was re-ported to have said, We hold that a soldier s most appropriateburial-place is on the field where he has fallen, as quoted inForged in Battle.The 54th s assault on Fort Wagner had been a failure.Black soldiers, however, had proved themselves to the North.It is clear enough that if the Massachusetts 54th had faltered,200,000 colored troops might never have been put into the field.Instead, the 54th had made Fort Wagner a name to rememberfor decades to come. Wagner was a turning point in the war, Benjamin Quarles noted. The valor of 600 enlisted men of theFifty-fourth opened the floodgates for the fresh army of morethan 180,000 Negro soldiers who would infuse new spirit into awar-weary North.The brave black regiment thus blazed a pathwhich would wind its way to Appomattox. 6Northern Bigotryis for Abolitionist, B is for Brother, C is forCotton-field, and D is for Driver.So it went in The A Anti-Slavery Alphabet, published in 1847
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