The Second Battle of Fort Wagner was fought on 18 July 1863 on Morris Island1, at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. After a day of bombardment, Union troops stormed the Confederate earthwork at dusk, led by the 54th Massachusetts, the second Black regiment raised in the Northern states, after the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry. Its colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, was killed on the parapet, and the attack was beaten back with heavy losses. Yet the courage of the 54th was widely praised, and Sergeant William Carney, who carried the flag back despite several wounds, performed the earliest action by an African American to be recognised with the Medal of Honor, although he did not receive it until 1900.
As darkness fell on 18 July 1863, some six hundred soldiers formed up on a narrow strip of sand on Morris Island. Many people in the North doubted that Black men would fight. The men of the 54th Massachusetts were about to answer them, at the front of an assault on one of the strongest forts in the South.
Part of The greatest battles of the Civil War · Before: The Siege of Vicksburg · Next: The Battle of Chickamauga
Charleston's guardian
In the summer of 1863 Union forces under Brigadier General Quincy Gillmore tried to take Charleston, where the war had begun at Fort Sumter. The key to the harbor entrance was Fort Wagner, a massive earth and sand fort on Morris Island. A first assault on 11 July had failed.1
The 54th Massachusetts
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry was the second regiment of Black soldiers raised in the Northern states, after the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, recruited from free Black men in many states, among them two sons of Frederick Douglass2. Its colonel was Robert Gould Shaw, the 25-year-old son of a Boston abolitionist family1. Shaw asked for the honour of leading the assault.
The assault at dusk
On 18 July Union guns and ironclads bombarded the fort for hours, but its sand walls absorbed much of the fire and the garrison sheltered in a bombproof1. At dusk the 54th led the attack along the narrow beach. Swept by musketry and canister, the men reached the walls and some climbed the parapet, where Shaw was killed. Other regiments followed and briefly held part of the fort, but the assault was beaten back with heavy losses.
The flag never touched the ground
When the regiment's colour bearer fell, Sergeant William H. Carney took up the flag and carried it to the parapet. Wounded several times, he brought it back to the Union lines, and he is reported to have said that the old flag never touched the ground2. He received the Medal of Honor in 19003; his action is the earliest by an African American to be recognised with the medal. Shaw was buried by the Confederates in a common trench4 with his men, and his father said that was where he would have wished to lie.
Why Fort Wagner mattered
The Confederates abandoned Fort Wagner in September 18635 after a long siege. The assault itself had failed, but the bravery of the 54th was reported across the North and helped persuade many doubters that Black soldiers would fight6. Tens of thousands more enlisted in the months that followed. The regiment is honoured by the Shaw Memorial in Boston and by the 1989 film Glory, one of the defining stories of the Civil War.
