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

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278 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

taken. Soon, however, the numerous torpedoes forced Brooks to stop using

the sap roller.

≥∫

Gillmore intensiﬁed his efforts. He planned a concentrated artillery bar-

rage by his batteries and the USS New Ironsides day and night to keep down

Rebel ﬁre and allow the sappers to dig across the last 100 yards. Two calcium

lights would be used to illuminate the fort at night. These devices were

invented by Robert Grant in 1850 and used a combination of oxygen and

hydrogen as a heat source. Parabolic reﬂectors then directed the resulting

light as far as eight miles. Gillmore set them up 750 yards from Fort Wagner,

out of effective small arms range for the Confederates, and had a laboratory

staffed by forty people to produce the oxygen and hydrogen. The Yankees

were also helped by the fact that the James Island batteries ceased ﬁring for

fear of hitting the fort. Gillmore had earlier asked for a huge shipment of

supplies, including 100,000 sandbags, ﬁfty coils of assorted wire, and addi-

tional shovels, from the Engineer Department in Washington, D.C. Two coils

of Gomez safety fuse, normally used in springing underground mines, were

part of the shipment, indicating that Gillmore wanted to be prepared for all

contingencies as he closed in on Wagner.

The plan went into operation on the morning of September 5, and it

ushered in the most intense phase of the siege. Brooks’s sappers had been

able to advance the approach only about twenty-ﬁve yards the preceding few

days. Now, in one day alone, they dug 150 yards in a series of short zigzags,

ending up very near the beach. At dawn on September 6, the fort lay silent

and badly damaged by the heavy Union ﬁre. ‘‘It looms over the head of the

sap, a huge, shapeless sand bluff,’’ as Brooks put it. He ordered a U.S. ﬂag

ﬂown at the head of the sap so gunners on the New Ironsides could better

direct their ﬁre. Brooks noticed that the Navy projectiles often hit the para-

pet and ricocheted into the fort, but fragments sometimes fell back into the

ditch and even into the head of his sap. One Federal was injured this way.

When the army projectiles exploded in the parapet of Wagner, they usually

gouged a hole in it that was ﬁlled by the loose, shifting sand rolling downhill.

The sappers found one torpedo in their path on September 5 and seven more

the next day. Peering to the left, they could see many plungers on the ground

in front of the land face. They also cut into several decaying bodies of their

comrades who had been killed on July 18 and whose remains had been

buried in front of the fort. The night before, some sappers had managed to

crawl to the ditch of Battery Wagner and look around.

≥Ω

These last few hours of the siege were the most impressive to observers.

Charles Colcock Jones, a Rebel ofﬁcer stationed on James Island, looked

through his ﬁeld glasses and plainly saw the Federals digging during the day,

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 279

‘‘as busy as bees, in full view and just in front of the Fort, working away with

a steadiness and a rapidity, perfectly remarkable.’’ During the night, Jones

tracked the burning fuses of shells as they arched through the sky and ex-

ploded in and around the battery, illuminating it with a weird light that

supplemented the shining moon. Both Wagner and Gregg remained silent.

∂≠

From the Union perspective, the view was a bit different. Ofﬁcer William

Eliot Furness observed the bombardment from a mortar battery. ‘‘It seemed

like tossing heavy balls into a great sand-hill, which the explosions after the

dropping of each ball converted into a hell’s mouth. The air was thick and

murky with smoke, the gunners were grimed and dripping with sweat from

excitement and work, and the shells as they left the mortars described the

most beautiful curves. Beyond the ﬂag on the Rebel stronghold, no sign of

life appeared in Wagner.’’

∂∞

Gillmore waxed poetic in describing the ﬁnal bombardment. ‘‘As a pyro-

technic achievement alone, the exhibition at night was brilliant and attrac-

tive, while the dazzling light thrown from our advanced trenches, the deaf-

ening roar of our guns, and the answering peals from James Island added

sublimity and grandeur to the scene. The imagination was beguiled and

taken captive, and all the cruel realities of war were for a time forgotten in

the excitement of this novel spectacle.’’

∂≤

Keitt commanded Wagner at this time and seemed more perturbed by the

naval gunﬁre than by the land-based guns. He ordered nearly all of his

infantry into the bombproofs, leaving only a few men on the parapet. Gun

crews were kept at their posts on the land face but not on the sea face.

Artillery ofﬁcer Robert C. Gilchrist noticed that the navy projectiles often

skipped on the water before slamming into or across the parapet. One ball hit

a school of mullet and threw one into the fort.

∂≥

Wagner’s condition slowly deteriorated during this intense bombard-

ment. It had become a mess even before September 5, with broken gun

carriages, odd pieces of lumber, splinters torn from wooden revetments by

previous shelling, and thousands of projectile fragments littering the inte-

rior. Now the increased tempo of shelling diminished parapets and traverses,

and the roof of the bombproof was furrowed like a plowed ﬁeld. A traverse

that protected the entrance to the hospital and one of the magazines was

broken, and sand ﬁlled the passages to both. A relay of men had to dig

the entrance out as shells continued to land in the area. ‘‘I could hear the

frequent cry ‘Call the ambulance corps,’ ’’ remembered Capt. Thomas A.

Huguenin of the 1st South Carolina, ‘‘and presently some poor fellow would

be brought in horribly mangled from the dangerous spot.’’ But the job was

eventually done, and light, air, and help could enter the hospital once more.

280 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

More than forty men were hit on September 5, and the killing continued the

next day. The calcium light shone all night, virtually stopping repairs on the

fort, and Union sharpshooters ﬁred so much during the day that work details

could not perform their duties.

∂∂

Living conditions in Wagner deteriorated faster than the fort itself. The

Rebels had been tried to the utmost even before the concentrated bombard-

ment began on September 5. They subsisted on raw bacon and biscuit and

had no opportunity to bathe or sleep, night or day, when Captain Huguenin

observed them on September 3. The water was nearly gone, so small wells

were dug in and to the rear of the fort; but the liquid in these was so tainted

by decaying bodies that it could not be used. The naval ﬁre ‘‘was a novelty’’

for them, according to Keitt, and many men were demoralized by it. They

were fainting from the heat, tension, and stiﬂing air in the crowded bomb-

proofs. His sharpshooters could do nothing to slow the work of the Federal

sappers, which further diminished the morale of his men.

∂∑

An anonymous chaplain of one of Keitt’s regiments offered an evocative

description of life in Wagner during those last two days. The bombproofs

were amazing, in his view. They saved the lives of so many men, yet they

were hellish places. The chaplain felt ‘‘dazed by my long stay in the darkness,

and weakened even to exhaustion by the toils and griefs of my work; head

throbbing loud and hard, mental faculties almost benumbed.’’ The bomb-

proof walls were made of pine logs placed upright, with horizontal logs and

a thick layer of sand for the roof. Rainwater constantly seeped through the

sand and dripped onto the plank ﬂoor of the enclosure; the sound was

audible even above the noise of the shelling. The drips also taunted the

thirsty occupants. The chaplain gave a service on the afternoon of Septem-

ber 5 and forever remembered that the candle burned a ‘‘dirty yellow’’ ﬂame

because of the foul air. He could see the faces of the garrison, ‘‘ghastly,

squalid, smirched—lips parched, tangled hair, eyes glittering with fever,

watching and toil.’’ They soaked up the religious message like men desperate

for hope.

∂∏

This chaplain remembered the bombproofs of Wagner as the most salient

experience of the war. ‘‘The sickening smell of blood, as from some foul

shambles in a dungeon; the reeking, almost unbreatheable air, away from

the skylight; the bare-armed surgeons, operating by candle-light; the ﬂoor,

crowded with anguish and death; the grim, low walls, and the steady drip,

drip, drip, ticking aloud; all these must come into the picture of the hospital

bomb-proof of Battery Wagner.’’

∂π

Early on the night of September 6, after the sap reached the fort, Federal

captain Wheelock Pratt made a thorough inspection of the sea face. He

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 281

found a fraise of sharpened stakes planted in the wall of the ditch, and about

200 pikes left over from the War of 1812 were stuck among them. Pratt was

able to pull out the pikes and lay them in the bottom of the ditch, but the

stakes were too ﬁrmly embedded. Meanwhile the sappers had completed the

approach by running it along the glacis, the forward crest of the ditch, along

the sea face. They even threw dirt into the bottom of the ditch to cover the

stakes. The head of the sap stopped at the ﬂanking wall that connected the

sea face to the beach. The Federals did not have to worry about naval gun-

ﬁre, for the New Ironsides ﬁred only during the day. After a month and a half

of digging, the siege of Battery Wagner had reached its climax.

∂∫

Gillmore planned his assault and briefed his subordinates on the night of

September 6. The attack was to take place at 9:00 a.m. the next morning,

when low tide would allow more room along the beach. The 3rd New Hamp-

shire and 97th Pennsylvania would lead the attack by scaling the sea face,

crossing the roof of the bombproof, and sealing its entrance to trap the

garrison. Stevenson’s brigade was to use the beach to bypass the fort al-

together and attack the low-lying infantry parapet that covered its rear. Col.

William W. H. Davis’s brigade was to follow Stevenson but deploy facing

north so it could block any movement of Rebel troops from Battery Gregg.

Gillmore passed out drawings of the fort to brigade commanders at the

conference. It was a good plan of attack, involving some 3,000 men. The

companies assigned to scale the sea face were also issued shovels. The Fed-

eral artillery would ﬁre until the last minute before the assault.

∂Ω

Beauregard pulled the garrison out only hours before the attack was to

take place. He sent David B. Harris and Capt. Francis D. Lee to Wagner on

September 6 to inspect the battery and recommend a course of action. Harris

advised evacuation. He found the men so discouraged by the stress of the

ﬁnal bombardment that a determined attack probably could not be repulsed.

The fort was silent; it offered virtually no artillery ﬁre or sharpshooting to

impede the Yankees, and the angle was badly damaged. Harris thought the

fort would be untenable in a couple of days.

∑≠

The pullout went smoothly, considering the constant artillery ﬁre and the

calcium lights that continued to shine on the fort. First the wounded and sick

were removed, then companies were marched in small detachments to the

wharf at Battery Gregg. The powder magazines were rigged with explosives.

Two companies remained behind to light them and do other odd jobs before

emptying the place; but the fuses were defective, and the magazines were

never ﬁred. No one in the garrison regretted giving up the fort. ‘‘It was a

veritable deathtrap,’’ recalled H. S. Fuller of the 23rd Georgia, ‘‘and it was a

relief to us when we learned that the island was to be evacuated.’’ John

282 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

Harleston was among the last to leave. On the boat going to Fort Johnson, he

overheard a North Carolina soldier pronounce a ﬁnal assessment of the

place. ‘‘I have heard the preachers talk abut Hell, a great big hole, full of ﬁre

and brimstone, where a bad fellow was dropped in, and I will allow it used to

move me at times, but Gentlemen[,] Hell can’t be worse than Battery Wag-

ner. I have got out of that, and the other place ain’t going to worry me

any more!’’

∑∞

The evacuation was conducted so well that the Federals had no inkling of

it until the ﬁrst streaks of dawn on September 7. A deserter brought the ﬁrst

news of the pullout, and the Federals sent skirmishers who found the gar-

rison had gone. Only seventy errant Rebels were caught. The work was lit-

tered with personal baggage, spiked guns, and commissary stores. ‘‘It looks

almost impossible that what we have done could be done,’’ marveled George

Benson Fox of the 75th Ohio. The Confederates had lost 125 men during the

ﬁnal bombardment, and they evacuated Battery Gregg as well as Wagner. All

of Morris Island was in Gillmore’s hands.

∑≤

Gillmore was eager to see the work and inspected it immediately after the

evacuation. He was a bit disappointed, for the damage to key points, like the

large bombproof, was not as great as he had expected. Gillmore concluded

that the sand protected it more effectively than dirt. Brigade commander

Davis also inspected the work. ‘‘The ﬁlth was in keeping with the ruin that

prevailed; and the heap of unburied dead without the sally-port showed how

hasty had been the ﬂight of the enemy.’’

∑≥

The Federals quickly cleaned up Battery Wagner and occupied it for the

remainder of the war. Photographs show Yankee troops on review inside the

work, their tents and artillery neatly positioned where once a deadly hail of

ﬁre had made life miserable for the former occupants. The bombproofs were

repaired and kept in order. One photograph shows how well the gun posi-

tions on the land face were made. The sand traverses were formed with

board-and-post revetments, and a covered way existed between them and

the parapet to allow safe communication from one artillery piece to another.

The Federals ﬁnished up Wagner as a model earthwork.

∑∂

Davis later noted the unique aspects of Gillmore’s reduction of Battery

Wagner. ‘‘The operations were carried on along a narrow strip of land less

than one-half the front of the work, a thing of rare occurrence in besieg-

ing a strong work.’’ Both sides had lines of communication across water—

Charleston Bay for the Confederates and the coastal waters for the Federals.

The heavy Parrott riﬂes proved their superiority. Davis argued that this cam-

paign saw the ﬁrst signiﬁcant use of guns larger than 100-pounders. While

Fort Pulaski had been breached by riﬂes at a range of a few hundred yards

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 283

the preceding year, Sumter was turned to rubble at a range of two miles. All

in all, not only the ﬁre on Sumter but the siege approaches to Wagner were

remarkable technical achievements. ‘‘A more difﬁcult problem than the re-

duction of Battery Wagner has seldom been presented to the engineer for

solution,’’ Davis mused, and he gave full credit to Gillmore. The general

should be considered the war’s ‘‘foremost engineer, and his operations on

Morris Island considered one of its most creditable performances.’’

∑∑

Although Wagner had been taken with consummate skill, a triumph of the

engineering art, the capture of Morris Island hardly changed the strategic

picture at Charleston. The Federals had a platform from which they could

continue to bombard Sumter, and they launched a poorly coordinated effort

to seize it as well. Both the navy and the army planned separate attacks for

the night of September 8 without informing each other until late in the day.

They decided to go through with both plans. Both contingents were to be

transported in small boats, the navy from ships to the south of Sumter and

the army from the streams and marshes that separated Morris Island from

James Island. The navy boats struck ﬁrst, with 500 sailors and marines. Only

a portion managed to land on the rocky beach of the sandbar that Sumter

occupied, where they were subjected to a devastating hail of small arms ﬁre

from the 300 defenders of the fort. The Confederates had been forewarned

and were ready for the attack. They used hand grenades and threw broken

masonry and bricks. Turpentine balls were ignited and tossed toward the

attackers to light up the area. It was a disaster, especially when the guns of

Fort Moultrie opened ﬁre on the boats. The Federals lost 125 men. The army

boats turned around when they heard the ﬁring, for the ofﬁcers were under

orders not to cause confusion if the navy beat them to the fort.

∑∏

Although easily repulsed, the boat attack forced the Sumter garrison to

take extra precautions. The Rebels anchored a boom of heavy logs just off-

shore to interfere with boats attempting to land. They stretched wire en-

tanglements at the base of the crumbling walls and placed fraises of sharp-

ened stakes set in wooden frames on the crest of the rubble pile. The garrison

had to remove these obstructions on the wall every morning to prevent them

from being destroyed in the daily bombardment. Log and sandbag barri-

cades were built inside the fort so sharpshooters and ﬁeld guns could ﬁre on

any Yankees who managed to enter the enclosure. In case of another, suc-

cessful attack, the garrison could take refuge in the casemates while Rebel

guns from the other forts bombarded the interior.

∑π

Gillmore responded to this failure by emplacing guns on the north end of

Morris Island to continue battering the fort. The batteries opened ﬁre on

October 26 and pounded Sumter for forty consecutive days. The ﬁre was

284 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

Federal Fort Putnam, Morris Island. After the capture of Morris Island, the Federals

planted 30-pounder Parrott riﬂes in Confederate Battery Gregg and renamed it Fort

Putnam. Note the use of gabions, sandbags, and barrels as revetment, and the pal-

isades outside the parapet. (Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal

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

directed mainly at the southeastern face on the basis of a deserter’s report,

later found to be false, that the Confederates were remounting guns there.

Only a desultory ﬁre was kept up on Sumter during November and Decem-

ber. Gillmore resumed his bombardment of Charleston on November 17,

having remounted a gun in the Marsh Battery and erected new batteries to

reach the target. Thirteen shells a day were tossed into the city, and on some

nights the methodical rain of projectiles continued until morning. One 30-

pounder riﬂe ﬁred at an elevation of forty-two degrees and burst on March

19, 1864, after 4,615 rounds.

∑∫

Sumter would never fall until the city itself was evacuated, but Gillmore

was right to assume it had been neutralized by the incessant Federal ﬁre. The

masonry walls were turned to piles of rubble, and the guns were removed to

be repositioned in more tenable locations. A small garrison was maintained

to prevent a surprise attack from capturing the place, but there was little

defensive or offensive power left on the island. Louis Manigault, secretary to

a Confederate surgeon in Augusta, Georgia, who visited his family farm

outside Charleston in late November 1863, could see Sumter through his ﬁeld

glasses from the roof of the farmhouse, seven miles away. It ‘‘resembles now,

in its cragged outlines, rather the ruined form of some Ancient feudal Castle

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 285

than the far-famed Key-stone fortiﬁcation of Charleston Harbour.’’ Observers

could also see the Federals on Morris Island from downtown Charleston if

they peered across the harbor with good telescopes. After every ﬁre from the

breaching guns, ‘‘numerous heads would be seen above their works watch-

ing where the shell would strike.’’

∑Ω

Sumter would stand as a symbol of Rebel resistance to the national gov-

ernment, although its possession had some real military value as well. Fear-

ful that the Rebels might have hidden guns in the rubble to open on his ﬂeet

at close range, Admiral John Dahlgren continued to hesitate about taking his

ironclads into the harbor as long as the Confederate ﬂag ﬂew over the fort.

New Confederate batteries along the north shore of James Island also de-

terred him from this risky move. Gillmore was disappointed. The original

plan called for the ships to sail in and neutralize the harbor as a blockade-

running port, but it became clear that Dahlgren would never do this. The

army might have captured the batteries on James Island, but that would

have required a new expedition on an order larger than that which had

captured Morris Island, and no one in Washington had any stomach for such

a commitment.

∏≠

For their part, the Confederates were proud of their tenacious defense of

Sumter. They dug holes ﬁve feet deep in the parade of the fort to obtain sand

for strengthening the battered walls, and they freely used gabions to shore

up the rubble where needed. The place was transformed into a weird object

bearing no resemblance to its originally graceful shape. Engineer Jeremy

Gilmer thought it could hold out forever. He did not worry about the Union

navy, for ﬁring heavy guns from the deck of a rolling ship prevented pinpoint

accuracy. Only if Gillmore managed to establish batteries close enough to hit

Fort Moultrie would the Confederates have to be concerned that the de-

fenses of the outer harbor might crack.

∏∞

In the end, very little was accomplished by the Union siege operation on

Morris Island. The harbor defenses were weakened but held ﬁrm, Sumter

was battered beyond recognition but did not fall, and Charleston was treated

to the horrors of bombardment, but nothing was achieved that could further

the Union cause. A tactical success with little strategic gain, the capture of

Battery Wagner nevertheless showcased the Union engineering establish-

ment at its best.

Beauregard’s New Line on James Island

On August 4, 1863, when the reduction of Battery Wagner was in full

swing, William B. Taliaferro recommended that the fortiﬁcations of James

Island be extensively renovated. Beauregard disagreed. He thought them

286 The Reduction of Battery Wagner

so defective that renovation would be a waste of time. Instead, the de-

partment commander ordered David B. Harris to lay out and supervise the

construction of a new line on James Island. Beauregard had contemplated

this earlier but did not have the labor to do it. He wanted the line placed

farther south of Pemberton’s, stretching from the marsh near Secessionville

to Dill’s House on the Stono River where Battery Pringle anchored its right

ﬂank. It was only half as long as Pemberton’s James Island defenses, thereby

achieving economy of manpower. Beauregard envisioned a series of lunettes

with closed gorges, each located at intervals of one-half to three-quarters of

a mile, all connected with a cremailliere or indented line of infantry trench.

He described a traditional line recommended in Mahan’s treatise on ﬁeld

fortiﬁcation.

∏≤

The digging essentially was done by the end of August, but the sodding

of parapets and traverses was only half-ﬁnished. There were ﬁve batteries

along the line, which was slightly more than two miles long, and four or ﬁve

guns were mounted in each. Battery No. 1 occupies an angle in the line with a

curved parapet ten feet high. Traverses twenty-ﬁve feet high protect each

gun emplacement. Consequently, the ditch is wide and deep. Most of the

traverses are triangular, but the one in the middle of the curve is rectangular

and twice as wide as the others. It has a small emplacement on top, today

about four feet deep and a couple of yards in diameter, for the protection

of lookouts.

Battery No. 2 has two wings and occupies one of the indentations of the

cremailliere line. Unlike Battery No. 1, the traverses are a bit lower than the

parapet but still triangular in shape. Harris constructed an extension of the

connecting infantry parapet to protect the battery’s right ﬂank. The infantry

line between the batteries consists of a parapet about six feet high with a

modest ditch in front, and the indentations are about ﬁfty yards apart. There

is no trench, for the landscape is very ﬂat and infantrymen needed to be as

high as possible. Even today, after more than 130 years of erosion, the line is

uniform and graceful.

∏≥

Beauregard’s new line was never tested in battle, for Federal operations

against Charleston essentially ceased after the fall of Morris Island. It was an

incredibly strong position that most likely would have held against anything

Gillmore could throw at it, and the line represented the best in Harris’s

practice as an engineer. The sand traverses of Battery No. 1 are unusual; only

the massive mounds of Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Fear River in

coastal North Carolina are bigger. On ﬂat terrain, with immense amounts of

sand available, it made sense to elevate the defenders as much as possible to

achieve command over the approach to the work.

The Reduction of Battery Wagner 287

Battery No. 1 Battery No. 2

Traverse in angle has a

fortified observation post.

Retrenchment to

protect right flank

Both batteries have a deep, wide ditch in front

and huge triangular traverses between each gun emplacement.

Beauregard’s New Line on James Island, Built August 1863 (based on ﬁeld visit, 1987)

Edward Manigault also designed a cremailliere line when he was ordered

to fortify a position for pickets stretching from Grimball’s Causeway to Rivers

Causeway in August 1864. Manigault, an artillery ofﬁcer in charge of Beau-

regard’s siege train, dug the line forward of Beauregard’s new line and to the

southwest of Secessionville. It was 1,300 yards long and needed to protect

thirty-six men. Since the line was on the edge of the solid ground next to the

marsh, Manigault conﬁgured it as an indented line with faces sixty yards

long and indentations of twenty yards. Eighty-eight black laborers, three

overseers, and two lieutenants started work on the night of August 19. It took

them an hour to dig each indentation, even though Manigault told the crew

to dig only forty feet of the face and ﬁfteen feet of the ﬂank for now, ‘‘so that

there may be some immediate shelter for the pickets, and the intervening

portions may be dug when we have more time and labour.’’

∏∂

The city of Charleston itself bristled with artillery emplacements. A num-

ber of photographs taken after the Federals occupied the place show many

large, well-made works. A battery on the Charleston waterfront consisted of

two gun platforms on sand mounds that rose several feet, with a tall traverse

between the emplacements. All the battery positions appear to have a good

growth of grass on them, evidence of sodding to keep the parapets from

eroding. Even on days when they did not dodge Federal shells, the citizens of

Charleston were constantly reminded of the war every time they walked

their streets, for there were Rebel guns everywhere.

∏∑

While the Confederates continued to expend labor on the defenses inside

the city, at the entrance to the harbor, and on James Island, the works