Fort Wagner's Sand Walls: A 60-Yard Beach and the End of Prisoner Swaps

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

On July 18, 1863, Brigadier General Quincy Gillmore sent Union infantry against Fort Wagner on Morris Island, which guarded the southern approach to Charleston Harbor. The only approach was a strip of beach about 60 yards wide between the Atlantic and the marsh of Vincent's Creek. An eight-hour land and naval bombardment, including six ironclad monitors within about 300 yards, did little damage because the fort's sand walls absorbed the shells and most of the garrison waited in a bombproof. This episode reconstructs the 7:45 p.m. assault led by the 54th Massachusetts under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

The defenders emerged to fire into the narrow column, and canister from pivoted howitzers tore through follow-up regiments, killing or mortally wounding General George C. Strong, Colonel Haldimand Putnam, Colonel John Lyman Chatfield, and Shaw. Gillmore then turned to a siege that churned up the dead in the sand until the Confederates abandoned the fort on September 7. The episode traces how the battle spurred Black enlistment, how Confederate refusal to treat Black soldiers as prisoners of war collapsed the Dix-Hill exchange cartel, and how the site was saved from development in 2008.

• The bombardment killed only about eight defenders and wounded about 20 more.
• The 6th Connecticut reached the fort's southeast bastion, where a Confederate regiment had not taken its post in time.
• Union casualties totaled about 1,515 against 174 Confederate, and Johnson Hagood reported burying 800 Union dead in a trench.
• Only 315 men of the 54th came through unhurt, and Sergeant William Harvey Carney later received the Medal of Honor.
• The Trust for Public Land bought the Morris Island site for $3 million to block a housing development.