Fort Wagner stands on Morris Island, guarding the approach to Charleston. Early this morning fresh federal troops land on the island, sizing up the fort. The only approach to the beach fort is over a narrow strip of sand bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and swamp marshland on the other. Prospects are…
While slaveholders, politicians, civil servants, religious leaders and newspaper editors in the Confederacy lament over the losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and try to sort out the meanings and repercussions thereof, many ordinary Southerners do the same. Mary Beckley Bristow is one of those ordinary Southerners. She is a member of the Sardis Baptist Church…
Today Union troops, having landed the previous day on Morris Island in Charleston harbor, begin a campaign to capture the island’s Fort Wagner (also known as Battery Wagner), a well-guarded Confederate fortress built upon beach sands south of Charleston. Controlling the fort would put a little more pressure on the nearby South Carolina coastal city.…