Fort Wagner 1863: The 54th Massachusetts, Shaw's Grave and Carney's Flag

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On July 18, 1863, Union general Quincy Gillmore set out to take Fort Wagner on Morris Island, a key to the southern approaches of Charleston Harbor. Ironclads pounded the sand fort for eight hours from about 300 yards offshore, but the sand absorbed the shells and filled back in, and the garrison sheltered in a bombproof, losing about eight killed and 20 wounded. Gillmore had about 5,000 troops against 1,800 defenders, yet the beach approaching the fort narrowed to 60 yards between the Atlantic and marshland, forcing an attack one regiment at a time. Brigadier General William B. Taliaferro's defenders had a moat lined with sharpened palmetto logs, an abatis, spiked planks hidden underwater and guns placed for enfilading fire. Leading the dusk assault at 7:45 p.m. was the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first official Black regiments raised in the North, under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

The 54th pushed through canister shot to the fort's walls, and when one Confederate regiment refused to leave the bombproof, a Connecticut regiment briefly breached the southeast corner. In the dark and smoke the Union reserves were never sent forward, and by 10 p.m. the attack had failed, with 1,515 Union casualties to 174 Confederate. Confederates buried Shaw in a trench with his Black soldiers, and his father asked that he be left there. After a 60-day siege the Confederates abandoned the fort on September 7. Published letters from the 54th spurred Black enlistment across the North, and Lincoln responded to Confederate threats against Black prisoners with General Order 252, halting prisoner exchanges.

• Shaw was shot dead on the parapet early in the action.
• Sergeant William Harvey Carney carried the flag to the parapet and back despite multiple wounds, saying the old flag never touched the ground, and became the first African American awarded the Medal of Honor.
• Continuous Union shelling during the siege kept unearthing the mass graves in front of the fort.
• Louisa May Alcott's story My Contraband and the 1989 film Glory both drew on the 54th's story.
• In 2008 the Trust for Public Land and preservationists raised $3 million to buy Morris Island for Charleston and block a housing development.