Tired, hungry and proud, the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry stood in the light of the setting sun and awaited the call to battle on the evening of July 18, 1863. The air was filled with the rumble of big guns, and the very ground on Morris Island, South Carolina, trembled beneath their feet. The regiment's baptism of fire had come only two days before, but the memories of that sharp skirmish had already begun to fade in the shadow of the awesome task that now lay before them.

The path that had brought these determined men to the embattled sands of South Carolina had been a long one, born of idealism and fraught with difficulty. That they had succeeded in the face of bigotry and doubt was due in great measure to the colonel who led them. Slight and fair-haired, Robert Gould Shaw appeared even younger than his 25 years. But despite his initial trepidations, the Harvard-educated son of abolitionist parents had assumed the weighty responsibilities of command, and never wavered in his fervent resolve to show friend and foe alike that black soldiers were the fighting equals of their white counterparts.

Suddenly, a mounted general and his staff rode up before the assembled ranks. The officer was handsome and smartly dressed, and grasped the reins of his prancing gray steed with white-gloved hands. Brigadier General George C. Strong pointed down the stretch of sand to the sinister hump of a Confederate earthwork that loomed amidst the roiling smoke and spitting fire of the guns. Loudly, Strong asked, 'Is there a man here who thinks himself unable to sleep in that fort tonight?' 'No!' shouted the 54th.

The general called out the bearer of the national colors, and grasped the flag. 'If this man should fall, who will lift the flag and carry it on?' After the briefest of pauses, Shaw stepped forward, and taking a cigar from between his teeth responded, 'I will.' The colonel's pledge elicited what Adjutant Garth Wilkinson James later described as 'the deafening cheers of this mighty host of men, about to plunge themselves into the fiery vortex of hell:'

The moment of trial for the 54th Massachusetts had come about through the appointment of a new Union commander, the then Brig. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore, who had taken charge of the Department of the South on June 11, 1863, replacing the querulous and unpopular Maj. Gen. David Hunter. Stocky and balding, the 38-year- old Gillmore had stood first in the West Point class of 1849, and had gone on to make a name for himself as a talented and intellectually inclined officer of engineers. His successful siege of Confederate Fort Pulaski early in the war had secured the water approaches to Savannah, Ga., and had won Gillmore wide acclaim. The victory had also fueled his considerable ambition.

From the moment of his arrival in the department, Gillmore had set his sights on the capture of Charleston, S.C. To many Northern eyes, Charleston was the very bastion of the Southern cause-the birthplace of the rebellion, from which the first shots had been fired at the Union flag. Indeed, one of the most formidable of Charleston's defenses was Fort Sumter, the battered island fortress whose capture had precipitated the war itself. Moreover, the commander of Charleston's 6,000-man defense force was none other than General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, the engineer officer turned Confederate leader whose forces had compelled Sumter's garrison to surrender two years before.

Gillmore viewed the reduction of Charleston as a logical sequence of strategic events that would bring an everincreasing rain of naval and artillery fire to bear on the city and its fortifications. Working closely with Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren's Federal fleet, Gillmore would seize Morris Island, whose low-lying sands commanded the defenses of the inner harbor. From Cumming's Point on the island's northern tip, Federal guns could reduce Fort Sumter, which had long prevented Federal ships from gaining access to the harbor. In order to get to Cumming's Point, Gillmore's 11,000 troops would first have to capture Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg, the Rebel fortifications that guarded the upper third of Morris Island.

The first part of Gillmore's strategy went entirely according to plan. In the early morning hours of July 10, Strong's brigade launched a surprise amphibious landing on the southern end of Morris Island. By late afternoon, the intrepid Strong had routed the island's defenders back to their strongholds at Wagner and Gregg. Strong's men took 150 prisoners, a dozen guns and five flags, and may well have overrun Fort Wagner itself, had Gillmore not been satisfied to rest on his laurels that day.

The Confederates had time to prepare for the assault that followed on July 11, and despite Strong's personal initiative and the gallantry of his leading regiment, the 7th Connecticut, the Southern garrison was able to repulse the onslaught. Only 12 Confederates were killed or wounded, while the failed attack cost the Union 330 men. As more Union forces arrived on Morris Island, Gillmore pondered his next move.

Originally constructed as a battery, Wagner had grown into a fully enclosed fort. Named for slain South Carolina Lt. Col. Thomas M. Wagner, the work measured 250 by 100 yards, and spanned the southern neck of Cumming's Point from the Atlantic on the east to an impassable swamp on the west. Its sloping sand and earthen parapets rose 30 feet above the level beach and were bolstered by palmetto logs and sandbags. Fourteen cannons bristled from its embrasures, the largest a 10-inch Columbiad that fired a 128-pound shell. Wagner's huge bombproof, its beamed ceiling topped with 10 feet of sand, was capable of sheltering nearly 1,000 of the fort's 1,700-man garrison. The fort's land face, from whence any Union assault must come, was screened by a water-filled ditch, 10 feet wide and 5 feet deep. Buried land mines and razor-sharp palmetto stakes provided additional obstacles to an attacking force.

Eleven hours into the unprecedented land and sea bombardment, Gillmore had every reason to expect that a determined assault would carry the battered enemy earthwork. Gillmore's chief subordinate, Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour, shared his commander's confidence. Seymour had formed a part of the Regular Army garrison that surrendered Fort Sumter at the start of the war, and eagerly anticipated the day when Sumter-and rebellious Charleston-would again be in Federal hands. Strong, whose brigade would spearhead the charge, was won over by Seymour's zeal. But not every subordinate was so sure of success. Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, like Strong a graduate of the West Point class of 1857, would lead a four-regiment brigade in the second wave of the assault. 'We are all going into Wagner like a flock of sheep,' Putnam told his officers. 'Seymour is a devil of a fellow for dash:'

Gillmore had launched his initial assault on Fort Wagner without artillery support. Determined not to repeat his mistake, he decided to precede a second effort with one of the heaviest cannonades of the war to date. The fort would be pulverized not only by entrenched land batteries, but by the guns of the Federal fleet, a formidable armada that included the USS New Ironsides, a veritable floating gun platform sheathed in iron. The shelling would commence on the morning of July 18, 1863.

Four Federal land batteries opened fire at 8:15 a.m., and soon 11 ships of Dah1gren's fleet were adding their salvos to the massive bombardment. After covering the fort's guns with sandbags in hopes of protecting them from the ravages of Yankee shellfire, the bulk of the Confederate troops scurried for the shelter of Wagner's bombproof. Brigadier General William B. Taliaferro, a 40-year-old Virginian and battle-scarred veteran of Stonewall Jackson's campaigns, commanded the Confederate garrison. Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver) fully expected the Federals to launch a land assault, and entrusted Lt. Col. P.C. Gaillard's Charleston Battalion with the dangerous assignment of manning the ramparts during the bombardment. The South Carolinians hunkered down and breasted the iron storm as best they could.

As the afternoon wore on, the tide rose, allowing the New Ironsides and five smaller monitors to close to within 300 yards of the fort. The turreted ironclads were a fearsome sight; to Taliaferro they seemed 'like huge water dogs, their black sides glistening in the sun:' Naval shells weighing more than 400 pounds hurtled through the air with a terrifying roar that sounded to one Southern defender like 'an express train.' Occasionally the iron missiles would skip across the waves like huge pebbles, each smack as loud as a cannon shot. One huge projectile exploded just offshore and showered the fort with a school of dead fish.

Shell after shell burst over and within Fort Wagner's ramparts, dismounting cannons and blasting wooden barracks and storehouses to splinters. In the words of one Southern officer, the fort was 'pounded into an almost shapeless mass!' Although most of the Confederates were safe within Wagner's massive bombproof, the strain was immense as the structure reeled and shook around them. Taliaferro, would later write: 'Words cannot depict the thunder, the smoke, the lifted sand and the general havoc; the whole island smoked like a furnace and trembled as from an earthquake!' Waves of sand were blown over the exposed troops of the Charleston Battalion, and Taliaferro himself was buried to the waist while encouraging his beleaguered defenders. But despite the awesome tempest of fire, fatalities were few.

At 2 p.m., the halyards of the fort's big garrison flag were severed and the banner fluttered to the ground. While four intrepid soldiers struggled to raise the fallen colors, engineer Captain Robert Barnwell planted a regimental battle flag atop the parapet to show the Yankees that the garrison remained defiant. Afternoon gave way to evening, and still the inferno raged. Then, shortly before sunset, the Union fire rose to a crescendo. Shadowy forms could be seen massing on the open beach, and Taliaferro readied his men for imminent attack.

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