Fort Wagner
Fort Wagner , also called Battery Wagner , was a fortification of the Confederate Army .
It was located on the island of Morris Island in South Carolina and had the task, together with the other forts of the fortification ring around Charleston , to cover the entrance to the bay and the port of Charleston. The fort was in 1863 the scene of two attacks during the Civil War as part of operations against Charleston's defenses.
Named after Lieutenant Colonel Thomas M. Wagner, who had already died at the time , the fort was built by Colonel DB Harris, who was a member of the Confederate engineering corps , after the start of the Civil War . The command of the fighting was Colonel Robert F. Graham and the command of the Defense District was Brigadier General William B. Taliaferro.
Fortifications
Fort Wagner was a system made up of two half-bastions with an intermediate curtain wall, secured at the rear only by a low wall , which was laid across the island and completely sealed off from the north. The left (eastern) flank of the plant was provided with an additional flesche directly on the Atlantic , the right shoulder (there was no flank) leaned against an impenetrable swamp. The dimensions were about 250 × 100 meters. The walls, made of sand and reinforced with palm trunks and sandbags, were 10 meters high and provided with crossbars in the area of the curtain wall. In front of the wall was a moat 10 meters wide and five meters deep . The area in front of the wall , which was only about 55 meters wide, was secured by buried land mines and sharpened palm trunks. In the area of the ramparts there were so-called bomb-proof shelters for 1000 men of the 1700-strong crew. The artillery equipment consisted of 12 (other sources speak of 14) heavy cannons, the largest of which was a 10 inches (25.4 cm) Columbiad . The bullet weight of this cannon was given as 128 pounds (about 57 kg).
prehistory
In the wake of a political success desperately needed by the Lincoln administration, Charleston was expected to be captured as soon as possible in 1863. Major General Henry Wager Halleck saw an operation against the fortifications of Charleston as promising and commissioned Brigadier General Quincy A. Gillmore in June 1863 to develop an overall plan for the conquest of Charleston as part of a joint operation by the Army and the Navy . Gillmore, who had already successfully led the siege of Fort Pulaski and fought it down with massive artillery fire, devised a plan to achieve the goal of conquering Charleston in three steps. First, Morris Island was to be conquered with Fort Wagner and the advanced batteries, then Fort Sumter was to be fought down by long-range fire from the northern tip of the island , and finally Fort Moultrie was to be destroyed in order to open up access to Charleston Bay .
The attack
On July 10, 1863, the Union artillery opened fire on the advanced batteries at the south end of Morris Island with four Ironclad ironclad ships under the command of Rear Admiral John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren from Folly Island, which was already occupied in April 1863 . Under the protection of the barrage, a brigade of Union infantry under the command of Brigadier General George C. Strong landed on Morris Island and captured the Confederate positions, but could only penetrate north to the beginning of the fire range of the guns from Fort Wagner.
On the morning of July 11th, Strong's brigade attacked again through thick fog. The attackers of the 7th Connecticut Infantry Regiment succeeded in penetrating the first trenches pushed forward, the attack collapsed in the defensive fire of the defenders. Since the fort's artillery also prevented reinforcements from being brought in with its barrage, the attack had to be broken off.
The Union troops lost 49 dead, 123 wounded and 167 missing. The Confederates had killed 12 people.
On July 18, 1863, the Union troops began another attempt to capture Fort Wagner. The artillery preparation carried out at the beginning by land and sea failed because the defenders sought cover in the existing shelters and therefore had only minimal losses. A 5,000-strong brigade then attacked Fort Wagner again.
The first wave consisted of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which was almost entirely made up of African-American soldiers . The regimental commander was Colonel Robert Gould Shaw , who led this attack on foot and was killed in the process.
In places the Union troops succeeded in penetrating the top of the wall, where they were involved in hand-to-hand fighting that lasted for hours. After almost all of the officers had died, however, they had to retreat.
The Union lost 1,600 men and the Confederate lost less than 200 men.
Though a tactical defeat, the Battle of Fort Wagner was reinterpreted as a political victory for the Union. The value of the colored soldiers had now been recognized, the recruitment of these was increased and the number of crews received was not inconsiderable.
After the unsuccessful attacks, the Union troops had to limit themselves to a formal siege . After 60 days of incessant bombardment, the Confederates abandoned the fort on September 7, 1863 and withdrew from Morris Island.
Today there are only remains of Fort Wagner, due to the erosion.
- see also Castle Pinckney
reception
The attack of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment is the subject of the award-winning feature film Glory, which starred Matthew Broderick as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw , Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington , which received an Oscar for best supporting actor.
literature
- David J. Eicher, The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War , Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5 .
- Frances H. Kennedy (Ed.): The Civil War Battlefield Guide , 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998, ISBN 0-395-74012-6 .
- Frederick H. Dyer: A Compendium of the War of Rebellion: Compiled and Arranged From Official Records of the Federal and Confederate Armies, Reports of the Adjutant Generals of the Several States, The Army Registers and Other Reliable Documents and Sources , Des Moines, Iowa : Dyer Publishing, 1908 (reprinted by Morningside Books, 1978), ISBN 978-0-89029-046-0 .
- James Moses Nichols: Perry's Saints . D. Lothrop and company, Boston 1886, LCCN 02-014949 , XI (English, Chapter 11 with “Assault on Fort Wagner” [accessed August 3, 2020] Literary description of the “Assault on Fort Wagner”).
- William C. Davis & Bell I. Wiley: The Civil War - Vicksburg to Appomattox . Black Dog & Leventhal, New York 1994, ISBN 1-884822-09-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Assault on Fort Wagner - July 18, 1863. American Battlefield Trust, June 2020, accessed August 4, 2020 .
Coordinates: 32 ° 43 ′ N , 79 ° 53 ′ W