Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864

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268 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

Federal Battery Rosecrans, Morris Island. This is one of four breaching batteries on the

second parallel. Note how the revetment is constructed, and note the palisades on the

far right. Also note the clutter of material behind the three 100-pounder Parrott riﬂes.

(Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army

Military History Institute)

course of the siege. Illness was a serious problem. At the worst phase of the

siege, nearly 22 percent of Gillmore’s troops were sick. His 2,000 black troops

were particularly pressed for work details, while white troops were usually

used as guards. Eight-hour shifts were best for the work details, and the

ofﬁcers justiﬁed the use of black troops for heavy labor with the widespread

belief that they worked more willingly. White soldiers sometimes skulked

and complained when assigned manual labor. The problem was worsened by

the fact that regimental ofﬁcers often detailed their worst subordinates to

supervise work details.

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The defensive power of these siege works was undeniable. The defenses

would have held against almost any attack the Confederates could have

mounted. The offensive power of the Federal works was immense as well.

The whole point of the siege was to reduce Wagner and destroy Sumter, and

Gillmore’s artillery tried to accomplish both goals. Seven batteries were con-

structed among the siege works: one behind the ﬁrst parallel, two on the

right wing of the abandoned ﬁrst parallel, and four at the second parallel.

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 269

Federal Battery Stevens, Morris Island. This was one of nine breaching batteries lo-

cated well to the left and rear of the ﬁrst parallel, where Morris Island was much wider.

Two 10-pounder Parrotts were planted snugly behind a well-made sandbag revetment.

The embrasures were formed with gabions. The gunners have hung their coats on poles

and on pegs fastened to the sandbags. (Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of

the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

Nearly all were named for ofﬁcers prominent in the Union army, some of

whom had been killed at Gettysburg. Nine more batteries were constructed

well to the left and rear of the ﬁrst parallel, where the south end of Morris

Island was much wider. Altogether these works mounted thirty-eight guns,

and the ironclads added their ﬁre as well. As noted earlier, the bombardment

of Sumter started on August 17 and continued on and off for several weeks.

Col. John W. Turner, Gillmore’s chief of artillery, worked out shifts for the

gun crews. The breaching batteries on Morris Island ﬁred more often on

Sumter than the guns that were trained on Wagner, so their crews were on

duty four hours and then took eight hours off. The ﬁre on Sumter was very

effective, far exceeding the damage done to Fort Pulaski by Gillmore’s guns

in April 1862. Soon the masonry walls of the fort were reduced to rubble so

jagged that Turner saw through his ﬁeld glasses that some projectiles did not

strike squarely enough on a surface to detonate the fuse. ‘‘The lines were

entirely destroyed,’’ recalled a Federal artillery ofﬁcer, ‘‘and it appeared a

shapeless mass of brick and mortar.’’

≤≤

270 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

The Union ﬁre on Battery Wagner had less obvious effect. The sand para-

pets often absorbed or even deﬂected projectiles, and they deteriorated more

grudgingly when shells exploded on or inside them. Duty in the batteries ﬁr-

ing on Wagner was, in some ways, more onerous. Turner established twelve-

hour shifts for the gunners in these batteries because they ﬁred less often,

and the ‘‘dry, hard, ﬂinty sand’’ blew all over the place and severely annoyed

the men. Turner believed that the unusually large number of burst guns was

caused by sand blowing into the barrels. It was necessary to locate the guns

behind the Federal troops, who therefore suffered from premature explo-

sions. The Rebels in Wagner lost up to seven men per day from the Union

artillery ﬁre.

≤≥

The Federals were positioned close enough to ﬁre on Charleston with the

right kind of ordnance, and Gillmore had the best available. Colonel Serrell

suggested emplacing a heavy gun one mile from Morris Island, believing a

suitable platform could be constructed on the marsh where the muck was

sixteen feet deep. Gillmore put him in charge of the work. He and Michie

developed a plan for what became the Swamp Angel Battery, or the Marsh

Battery. They started on August 10 and drove pilings deep into the marsh by

manual labor. Then they bolted two layers of pine logs onto the top of the

pilings. The parapet was constructed entirely of 13,000 sandbags, ﬁlled on

Morris Island and transported to the site. The gun platform consisted of

marsh grass, canvas, sand, and planks. The whole emplacement supported

an 8-inch Parrott riﬂe and weighed a total of twelve tons, while a plank

causeway connected the site to Morris Island. The gun was hauled by boat to

the emplacement in one night and was ready to open ﬁre on August 17. At a

range of 8,800 yards and thirty-ﬁve degrees elevation, the Swamp Angel

shocked the citizens of Charleston with its ﬁre. It was the ﬁrst time in the war

that a major city of the Confederacy was bombarded. Only at Fredericksburg

did Federal guns deliberately ﬁre into residential areas of a Southern town

on a large scale. Gillmore’s gunners used compass readings to aim at the

steeple of St. Michael’s Church, and they discharged shells ﬁlled with a

chemical mixture designed to set ﬁres. Fortunately for the residents, the

extreme elevation weakened the gun, and it burst on the thirty-sixth round

on August 23. Gillmore did not replace it for the duration of the siege, but a

second Parrott was installed at the site in November 1863.

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Several superb photographs were taken of the Union siege works on Mor-

ris Island, providing an invaluable look at life in the trenches. The huge guns,

ranging from 30-pounder to 300-pounder Parrotts, were protected by mas-

sive parapets. One can easily see how the sandbags and gabions were aligned

to shore up the sand. Photographs of bombproofs show construction details

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 271

The Swamp Angel. This is the dismounted ﬁrst Swamp Angel, which burst on August

23, 1863. Gillmore did not replace it until the following November. One can see the logs

that constituted the base of the emplacement; the parapets were made entirely of

sandbags. Its construction in the middle of the marsh west of Morris Island was an

engineering achievement. (Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal

Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

as well as the litter of equipment, even a disarmed Confederate torpedo.

The 300-pounder Parrott burst, but enterprising gunners simply chipped

back the jagged edges and continued ﬁring. Several photographs of batteries

Brown, Hays, Kirby, Meade, Reynolds, Rosecrans, and Strong give a sense of

the clutter and debris lying about on the ground. The men had to pick their

way around this mess much as a craftsman had to walk around the cast-off

pieces of his handiwork. There was limited time and energy to maintain a

spotless battery, and Gillmore’s gunners hardly bothered to try.

≤∑

Clean or not, the Federal batteries severely punished the Rebels. Confed-

erate ofﬁcers did all they could to respond to the Union ﬁre. They added two

howitzers, two heavy guns, and a mortar to Wagner’s armament and kept

the garrison at a steady strength of 1,000 infantrymen and 180 gunners. The

artillerymen exacted a price among the Federal guards and working parties.

Wagner was so close that they had little time to take cover when lookouts

yelled, ‘‘Cover, Wagner’’; the shell often exploded before the warning was

given. Colonel Harrison at times ordered his gunners to cease ﬁre for a bit

to draw out the Yankee working parties; then they resumed. ‘‘I found this

to work well,’’ he reported, ‘‘as my pickets report many shrieks from the

272 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

Burst Parrott riﬂe, Morris Island. This 300-pounder gun was chipped back and made

ready for continued ﬁring. The revetment appears to be a wall of sod, while gabions,

fascines, and planks form the embrasure. (Massachusetts Commandery, Military

Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

enemy’s wounded.’’ The Rebels were good at ﬁlling the embrasures with

sandbags after each ﬁring of the heavy guns to shield themselves from Union

sharpshooters. They even ran a ﬁeld piece out of the fort one night to ﬁre on

a working party, then ran it back before the Federals could return ﬁre.

≤∏

Beauregard ordered the construction of ﬁve batteries along the southern

edge of James Island to ﬁre on the Federals besieging Wagner. They were

poorly constructed because of the low-lying ground and the necessity for

haste. When a rainstorm hit the area in late August, it ﬂooded ﬁve gun

platforms in Battery Haskell alone. The engineers had to drain them by

cutting through defensive parapets and digging ditches that later interfered

with the movement of guns. Maj. Edward Manigault, who was in charge of

the heavy guns at Charleston, also noted that many rounds either exploded

prematurely or failed to detonate at all. Of eighteen shells ﬁred at one of

Gillmore’s batteries, three burst short, two broke prematurely, and only four

landed on or near the target. These scattered the Yankee workmen only for a

few minutes. Nevertheless, Gillmore lost four or ﬁve men each day from the

ﬁre of these James Island batteries. This was little more than an annoyance

for a determined force such as Gillmore commanded.

≤π

The small Confederate garrison of Wagner was just as determined, and it

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 273

was managed with enough skill to endure the siege. The Rebels rotated

commanders and regiments on a regular basis; this was probably the best

solution to the problem of using a small force in a dangerous position. But

Ripley complained that the frequent change of commanders caused inefﬁ-

ciency and confusion. He particularly referred to the management of the

ammunition supply, but his comments could apply to all aspects of command

in the fort. At least six ofﬁcers were identiﬁed as commanding the fort during

the course of the siege. The regiments were relieved regularly, from every

two days when the bombardment was severe, to as many as eight days. Brig.

Gen. Thomas L. Clingman argued that four days was the optimum. His 8th

North Carolina was worn out by its week-long tour of duty at the fort. The

4th Georgia remained at Wagner for ﬁve days and lost one killed and eight

wounded. The line of communications was tenuous. All supplies and troops

had to be shipped from the forward depot at Fort Johnson to the wharf at

Battery Gregg during the night.

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Under almost constant ﬁre and distress from the heat while cooped up in

a small place, the defenders of Wagner suffered physically and emotionally.

Ofﬁcers noted that fatigue parties often worked slowly and that the men

took catnaps or slipped away into the darkness, even when good commis-

sioned ofﬁcers supervised their work. Many suggested relying on slave labor

instead of soldiers. As the pressure of the siege mounted, discipline and

attention to detail suffered. Engineer Capt. J. T. Champneys complained that

the fort was becoming a mess. The bombproofs were ‘‘quite unpleasant,’’ and

the ground around the commissary building was ‘‘very offensive.’’ Much

‘‘splintered wood’’ and ‘‘shattered timber’’ lay scattered inside the fort. Mo-

rale was affected by the common belief that if Sumter fell, the garrison on

Morris Island would be cut off and sacriﬁced. The frequent Union artillery

ﬁre during the night also demoralized the garrison. Thomas Grange Simons

of the 25th South Carolina could get no more than a half-hour of sleep at a

time during his ﬁve-day rotation on the island, due to the noise and the

constant call for repair parties. The well inside Wagner yielded salty water,

and the hospital was overcrowded. Many wounded had to be placed outside

the work behind sand hills.

≤Ω

The large bombproof barely protected the garrison. There was not enough

room inside it because the hospital took up a lot of space. Many soldiers were

forced to remain out in the open, clinging to the interior slope of the parapet

for protection even during the heaviest bombardment. Johnson Hagood ex-

perimented with sending half the garrison out of the battery to take shelter

among the sand hills to the rear, believing they could rush back in time if an

attack took place. John Harleston of the 4th South Carolina Cavalry acted as

274 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

Bombproof in Battery Wagner. Taken soon after Wagner fell, this photograph shows

that many of the sandbags that constituted the Confederate bombproof were shredded

by artillery ﬁre and deteriorated by weathering. The Federal troops, some of whom

apparently are members of the 54th Massachusetts, have a collection of shovels and

picks leaning against the bombproof wall. (Massachusetts Commandery, Military

Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

a courier between Gregg and Wagner. He recalled that when a shell caved in

the entrance to the smaller bombproof one night, it trapped the men inside.

An ofﬁcer organized the rescue effort and assigned a man to dig for ﬁve

minutes at the narrow opening. He was relieved by another until those inside

were saved. Shells continued to fall every few minutes. One of them ex-

ploded in the entrance and nearly cut a man in two. His comrades had to dig

out his body in order to continue the rescue effort.

≥≠

Harleston saw much more during his tour of duty as a courier. When he

arrived on Morris Island on the night of August 31, he met an acquaintance

who was leaving. ‘‘I thank God I am getting away from this place,’’ the man

told Harleston. ‘‘I tell you it is hell, hell.’’ The couriers had only ﬁve worn-out

horses, all of which were scratched by artillery ﬁre, to cover the three-

quarters of a mile that separated Gregg from Wagner. Even the corral had to

be protected by an earthwork. It was worth a man’s life to ride between the

two forts along the beach, exposed to artillery ﬁre the whole distance and to

Union sharpshooters near Wagner.

≥∞

The garrison was exposed to the ‘‘burning sun of a Southern summer, its

heat intensiﬁed by the reﬂection of the white sand,’’ wrote Robert C. Gil-

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 275

christ, an artillery ofﬁcer in the battery. It ‘‘scorched and blistered the unpro-

tected garrison,’’ while rainstorms soaked the men unmercifully. ‘‘An intoler-

able stench from the unearthed dead of the previous conﬂict, the carcasses

of cavalry horses lying where they fell in the rear, and barrels of putrid

meat thrown out on the beach, sickened the defenders. A large and bril-

liantly colored ﬂy, attracted by the feast, and unseen before, inﬂicted wounds

more painful, though less dangerous, than the shot of the enemy. Water was

scarcer than whiskey.’’ The meat spoiled because of the long delays often

encountered in shipping provisions from Charleston to Battery Gregg. Some-

times the barrels would be on the docks or in the holds of ships forty-eight

hours in transit.

≥≤

Repair work on Wagner was constant and demanding, and the little gar-

rison could barely keep up with it. They were hampered by a shortage of

sandbags, which were especially useful in constructing loopholes for sharp-

shooters. Engineer Champneys directed a series of repairs during his time at

Wagner, including replacing boards that held up the banquette, repairing

revetments, and replacing sand blasted away from the bombproof, parapets,

and traverses. Return artillery ﬁre often was postponed or canceled en-

tirely because of the need for workers to repair gun embrasures. Sometimes

planned work was canceled because of ignorance. The engineers wanted to

plant obstacles in the ditch of the land face one night but decided not to

when no one could recall for certain whether torpedoes had been planted in

the ditch. The work details were organized into two squads of seventy-ﬁve

men each night. Garrison commanders often found the work so poorly done

that it had to be redone later. Col. Lawrence M. Keitt reported on August 18

that the ‘‘men were greatly fatigued last night, and it was difﬁcult to keep any

but the willing men at work.’’

≥≥

The most unique and innovative feature of Wagner’s defenses was the

torpedo ﬁeld planted along its land face. The Confederates began installing it

on July 11 when ﬁfty-seven shells were placed from 5 to 20 yards in front of

the ditch. Capt. M. M. Gray, who had charge of them, examined the ﬁeld

after the assault of July 18 and found that twenty had been exploded, many

by Federal artillery ﬁre. Others were damaged by heavy rains that fell before

July 18. Gray then planted an additional forty-seven shells, ranging from 20

to 250 yards in front of the fort. More and more were emplaced right up to

the end of the siege until there was a mineﬁeld stretching far and wide along

the approach to Wagner.

≥∂

This mineﬁeld was a signiﬁcant obstacle for the Federals. It would have

claimed many lives if a third assault had been planned, and it forced the

sappers to slow down as well. But as Gillmore pointed out, it also protected

276 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

the Federals because it inhibited sorties by the garrison against the head of

the sap. In fact, several Confederates were killed by the torpedoes during the

siege. When a ﬂag was raised to pass communications between the lines on

July 27, two Rebel artillerymen wandered in front of the fort and were killed

by mines. One wonders if they were trying to desert. Another Rebel was

badly wounded when he crawled over a torpedo one night when out on a

detail to plant more of them. Perhaps the fact that the wind blew sand that

covered the torpedoes accounts for the accidents that sometimes happened

to the Confederates.

≥∑

When Federal sappers advanced beyond the sand ridge that had been

captured on August 26, they encountered the ﬁrst torpedo some 200 yards

from the battery. Throughout the rest of the siege, the Yankees dug up more

than sixty mines as they pushed their sap forward. Brooks divided them into

three types. He found twenty that were fully armed 24-pounder shells with a

tin covering. They were buried just beneath the surface with a percussion

fuse on top that could be detonated by a footfall. More than thirty mines

were made of ten-gallon kegs with conical additions on the ends. Brooks

assumed these were normally used as underwater mines. The Rebels had

placed boards on the ground with one end resting on the fuse so that anyone

stepping on the board, even a few feet from the mine, would set it off. Finally,

the sappers encountered three huge 15-inch Navy shells buried in the sand

with detonation devices similar to those on the wooden kegs. They dug

underneath these mines to dislodge them. The wooden kegs were rendered

harmless by drilling small holes through the casing and pouring water in to

soak the powder. Six torpedoes, however, exploded accidentally during the

process of removal, causing twelve casualties. Some of the mines apparently

had wires strung from the fuse to the fort so they could be exploded by

the garrison.

≥∏

The torpedoes were not the only impediment to the ﬁnal advance toward

Wagner. The Federals established their ﬁfth parallel on the sand ridge and

immediately resumed sapping. The approach started from the right wing of

the parallel, 245 yards from the Rebel work, and traced a huge zigzag, ﬁrst

toward the marsh and then to the beach. At that point, the head of the sap

was only 100 yards from Wagner, but that last short distance was the most

difﬁcult to traverse. ‘‘The dark and gloomy days of the siege were now upon

us,’’ wrote Gillmore; ‘‘our progress became discouragingly slow and even

fearfully uncertain.’’ The head of the sap was so close that converging ﬁre

from different points in Wagner could be delivered on it, and the combina-

tion of clear skies and a full moon created so much light that Rebel sharp-

shooters were able to inﬂict heavy casualties among the sappers on the night

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 277

Federal engineers demonstrating how to sap, Morris Island. Members of the 1st New

York Engineers show how the sapping operation worked. This photograph was taken

after the fall of Battery Wagner, which can dimly be seen in the right background, and

probably was exposed at a spot on the ﬁfth Union parallel. (Massachusetts Command-

ery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

of August 29. The approach was stalled. Meanwhile, Brooks consolidated his

hold on the ﬁfth parallel. He established a Requa battery and built sand-

bagged loopholes and a banquette. Gillmore wanted him to construct more

protected spaces using traverses so that he could mass infantry for an attack

on Wagner.

≥π

The sappers now became the key elements of Gillmore’s command, for

they had to take the army across the last 100 yards of sand to the ditch.

Brooks divided the eight artiﬁcers and two noncommissioned ofﬁcers of his

sapping brigade into two squads to alternate duty at the head of the ap-

proach. They were responsible for moving the sap roller, a one-ton monster

that protected the diggers. It was rolled forward only a few inches at a time,

using hooks on the end of twelve-foot poles. The sappers quickly piled up

sand to cover the ﬂanks and then dug a trench four feet wide and two feet

deep. The proﬁle of the parapet could be smoothed out with a drag shovel,

an instrument specially designed to be used from behind cover. The Confed-

erates employed as many as 100 sharpshooters to harass the sappers during

the day, but they caused little damage as long as due precautions were