LEWIS H. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK AND ANNA MURRAY DOUGLASS

Morris Island, S.C. 20 July [1863.]

MY DEAR FATHER & MOTHER AND ALL:

Wednesday July 8 our regiment left S Helena Island for Folly Island, arriving there the next day, we were ordered to land on James Island,¹On 23 June 1863, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts was ordered to depart St. Simons Island, Georgia, for Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. On the next day, the Fifty-fourth was ordered to move to St. Helena Island, across the harbor from Hilton Head. The regiment remained on St. Helena until 8 July, when, after only one hour’s notice, they were ordered to move to neighboring Folly Island to aid in Brigadier General Quincy A. Gillmore’s effort to capture Charleston, which involved threatening Confederate positions on nearby James Island. On 11 July, the Fifty-fourth landed on James Island, where it remained until the 18 July assault on Fort Wagner. Emilio, , 46–60; Trudeau, , 73–77.which we did in the upper end of James Island is a large rebel battery with eighteen guns. After landing on James Island we threw out pickets to within two miles of the rebs. fortification. We were permitted to do this in peace until last Thursday the 16th inst. when about four in the morning the rebels made an attack on our pickets—who were about two hundred strong—with a force of nearly nine hundred men.²The 16 July 1863 attack by Confederate forces on the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts’s pickets on James Island is alternately known as the Battle of James Island and the Battle of Grimball’s Landing. The attack, meant to isolate the remaining Union forces on James Island, was led by Brigadier General Johnson Hagood and involved approximately 3,000 Confederate troops from Brigadier General Alfred H. Colquitt’s brigade of South Carolinians and Georgians and the Fifty-fourth Georgia Infantry. The battle served as the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts’s first real combat test, the black soldiers standing alongside their white counterparts and holding their ground long enough to allow other white Union army units to retreat. David J. Eicher, (New York, 2001), 567; W. Scott Poole, (Macon, Ga., 2005), 88; Frances H. Kennedy, ed., (New York, 1998), 192; Russell Duncan, (Athens, Ga., 1999), 107–09. Our men fought like tigers one sergeant killing five men by shooting and bayonetting. The rebels were held in check by our few men long enough to allow the 10 Connecticut to escape being surrounded and and captured³The first recruits of what became the Tenth Connecticut Infantry began to assemble at Hartford in September 1861, but the unit was not formally organized until 22 October. Within a few days of mustering, the Tenth was ordered to Annapolis, Maryland, where it trained until being deployed to North Carolina in early January 1862. In that year, the men of the Tenth were cited for their bravery during battles at Roanoke Island, New Bern, Kinston, and Goldsboro, all in North Carolina. In July 1863, the Tenth Connecticut was ordered to join the Union assault on Fort Wagner, on Morris Island, South Carolina, where the regiment was saved from annihilation by the famous all-black Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, which held its ground and prevented the Confederates from flanking the Union lines. Following a period of rest and recuperation in St. Augustine, Florida, over the fall of 1863, the Tenth was ordered to the front lines in Virginia in February 1864. Once there, the Tenth Connecticut saw action at City Point, Bermuda Hundred, and Fort Darling. In October 1864, the Tenth fended off a
Confederate counterattack on the Union’s march toward Richmond, and was credited with saving the Army of the James. On 2 April 1865, the men of the Tenth Connecticut played an important role in the assault on Fort Gregg, and they were once again commended for their gallantry under fire. The Tenth was part of the Union forces marshaled to pursue General Robert E. Lee on his retreat from Richmond and was among the units on hand to witness the Confederate surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865. The surviving members of the Tenth Connecticut mustered
out on 15 August 1865 and returned to Hartford later that month. William A. Croffut and John W. Morris., (New York, 1869), 163–74, 342–48, 541–52, 786–95; Christopher Cox, (Raleigh, N.C., 2013), 31; Leslie M. Alexander and Walter C.
Rucker, eds., , 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 2:479; Boatner, , 123–27, 301. for which they received the highest praise from all parties who knew of it.⁴ The Battle of James Island was the proving ground for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, demonstrated in part by the tributes its troops received from white soldiers after the battle. In a letter dated 16 July 1863, Robert Gould Shaw reports praise from General Alfred Terry, the commander of the Union army division on James Island. A member of the Tenth Connecticut Infantry, saved by the Fifty-fourth during the battle, is quoted as writing to his mother, “But for the bravery of three companies of the Massachusetts Fifty-Forth (colored), our whole regiment would have been captured . . . They fought like heroes.” Robert Gould Shaw to Annie K. Shaw, 16 July 1863, in Duncan, , 385; Glaathar, , 136. It earned us our reputation as a fighting regiment. Our loss was in killed wounded and missing 45. That night we took—according to our officers—one of the hardest marches on record through woods and marsh. The rebels we defeated and drove back in the morning. They however were reenforced with 14000 men we having a only half dozen regiments, so it was necessary for us to escape.

I cannot write in full. I am expecting every moment, to be called into another fight. Suffice it to say we are now on Morris Island.⁵Morris Island, a small island in Charleston Harbor, was a strategic Confederate stronghold throughout the Civil War, especially during the Second Battle of Charleston Harbor. Along with Sullivan Island, Morris Island formed the mouth of Charleston Harbor, in the middle of which sat Fort Sumter. Before the Civil War, Morris Island was the home of Charleston’s lighthouse and a hospital for patients afflicted with contagious illnesses. Following the secession of South Carolina, Morris Island became a strategic location for the Confederate military, since it was the closest land to Union-controlled Fort Sumter. After South Carolina troops occupied and fortified the island, they were easily able to win the Battle of Fort Sumter on 12–13 April 1861. Morris Island remained unprotected until June 1862, when it became vulnerable to Union capture. Confederate troops reoccupied it, and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Wagner oversaw the construction of a fortification at Cummings Point. A second fortification, named Fort Wagner after Lieutenant Colonel Wagner, was constructed on a narrow section of the island; it was designed to keep invading Union forces from reaching Cummings Point and Charleston Harbor. Following the First and Second Battles of Fort Wagner in July 1863, the Confederacy abandoned Morris Island in September 1863. Stephen R. Wise, (Columbia, S.C., 1994), 1–30; Long and Long, , 373–79. Saturday night we made the most desperate charge of the war on Fort Wagoner.⁶The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts led an assault on Fort Wagner on the night of 18 July 1863, and the fighting lasted through the next morning. The regiment, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, sustained 247 casualties while spearheading the unsuccessful attack. Official reports of the battle portrayed the black regiment’s performance as courageous and disciplined, dispelling widespread
doubt about the efficacy of black soldiers in combat. Quarles, , 13–17; Cornish, , 152–156; , 2:11–12. Our loss in killed wounded and missing was 300. The splendid Fifty Fourth is cut to pieces, all of our offficers with the exception of eight are either killed or wounded. Col. Shaw⁷Businessman and soldier Robert Gould Shaw (1837–63) was born in Boston and educated at Harvard College. He was living in New York City when the Civil War began and enlisted in the Seventh New York Regiment. In 1862 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts Regiment, later rising to the rank of captain. When Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts sought white officers for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, the North’s first black regiment, he offered the command to Shaw, who, after first declining, became its colonel in May 1863. After acquitting itself well at James Island on 16 July 1863, the regiment led an assault on Fort Wagner during the night of 18–19 July. Among the 247 casualties of that battle was Shaw himself, who died while rallying his men at the fort’s parapet. He was buried in a common grave with others from the regiment. Stephen T. Riley, “A Monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw,” , 75:27–38 (1963); , 5:31; , 8:142–43. is a prisoner and wounded Major Hallowell⁸Major Edward “Needles” Hallowell (1836–71) served in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts from the unit’s inception. Raised in a fervently abolitionist Quaker family, Hallowell was initially selected as third in command of the Fifty-fourth, behind Robert Gould Shaw and his own brother, Norwood Hallowell. When Norwood was selected to lead the newly created Fifty-fifth Massachusetts, Edward took over as executive officer of the Fifty-fourth. Following the battle of Fort Wagner and Shaw’s death, Edward was promoted to colonel. After recuperating from wounds received in that battle, he commanded the Fifty-fourth for the remainder of the war. Hallowell supported his troops’ decision to reject the unequal pay offered them and vigorously lobbied state and federal officials for redress. He also successfully championed the commissioning of one of his unit’s sergeants, Stephen A. Swails, as a lieutenant. Donald Yacovone, (Urbana, Ill., 1997), 61–62, 71–79, 89; Duncan, , 53, 63, 117. is wounded in three places the Adjutant⁹Garth Wilkinson James (1845–83) served as the adjutant of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts under the command of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw during the First and Second Battles of Fort Wagner in July 1863. Born in New York City, James, known as “Wilkie,” was the son of the theologian Henry James, Sr., and the younger brother of the philosopher William James and the novelist Henry James, Jr. James enlisted in the Forty-fourth Massachusetts at the age of seventeen, and because of his support of the abolitionist cause and the inclusion of black regiments in the Union army, he was
recruited by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw to be an officer in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. James was severely wounded during the Second Battle of Fort Wagner on 18 July 1863. His wounds kept him in poor health for the remainder of his life and contributed to his death at age thirty-eight. New York , 23 November 1883; Howard M. Feinstein, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 76;
Duncan, , 58, 65, 87. in two place, Sergt Simmons¹⁰Sergeant Robert J. Simmons (?–1863) was a veteran of the British Army and a native of Bermuda who immigrated to New York and joined the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. Simmons and his company participated in the assault on James Island on 16 July 1863, offering assistance to the Union troops on picket when Confederate forces attacked. Simmons was wounded and captured during the Battle of Fort Wagner on 18 July 1863, and he died in a Charleston Confederate prison a short time later. Three days before the Battle of Fort Wagner, Simmons’s New York City home was burned and his seventeen-year-old nephew killed during the New York draft riots. Simmons’s fellow soldiers noted his bravery, particularly during the Battle of Fort Wagner, following his capture and death. Christopher B. Booker, (Westport, Conn., 2000), 78–79; Edwin S. Redkey, “Brave Black Volunteers: A Profile of the Fifty-
Fourth Massachusetts Regiment,” in Blatt, Brown, and Yacovone, , 28–29. is killed Nat Hurley¹¹Private Nathaniel Hurley was a nineteen-year-old laborer from Rochester, New York, when he joined Company E of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts in March 1863. He fought at the Battle of Fort Wagner on 18 July 1863, where he was wounded and captured by Confederate forces. He remained a prisoner until his death on 15 February 1865 in Florence, South Carolina. Emilio, , 361. missing and a host of others. I had my sword sheath blown away while on the parapet of the fort. I have received the praise of the officers for [illegible]. The quartermaster says I have made my mark. The knife and canister shell and [illegible] swept us down like chaff, still our men went on and on, and if we had been properly supported we would have held the fort. But the white troops could not be Union made to come up,¹²Following the initial attack by the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, the movements of the supporting Union troops allowed for too much time between assaults, which gave the Confederate forces the advantage in battle. Heavy losses, the rapid incapacitation of several commanding officers, and general chaos on the battlefield during the Battle of Fort Wagner led to an absence of Union reinforcements. Specifically, Brigadier General Truman Seymour sustained wounds that forced him off the battlefield, resulting in his orders for Brigadier General Thomas Stevenson’s brigade to advance as reinforcements to be ignored. Stevenson’s brigade remained in position, and the battle, already in disarray, fell apart shortly thereafter. John Johnson, (Charleston, S.C., 1890), 105–06; Glatthaar, , 139–40. the consequence is we had to fall back dodging shells and other missiles. If I have another oppportunity I will write more fully. Good bye to all. If I die to night I will not die a coward.

Good Bye

LEWIS

ALS: Gilbert A. Tracy Manuscripts, CtHiS.