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Epilogue
- University of Georgia Press
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EPILOGUE The survivors ofthe Fifty-fourth struggled through the sandawayfrom the assault on Fort Wagner,found friends, and reformedat the southern end of Morris Island wherethe sand dunes played out onto the flat beachnear the Atlantic Ocean. Luis Emilio, the only officer above the rank of captain not wounded or killed in the attack, commanded the regiment. Men hugged one another, thanked God for their safety, and wept over the dead. They worried what the Confederates might do to their captured comrades, and prayed that Shaw had somehow survivedhis wounds and would be returned by prisoner exchange. Since the fight on James Island on the sixteenth, the men had been in motion. Now they rested, but only for oneday. Many wrote hurried notes telling loved ones that no matter what the papers reported, they were alive. In a letter to his fiancee two days after the assault , Sgt.-Maj. LewisDouglass "snatched amoment to write55 He knewthey had passed the test and cast off the burden of proving themselves capableof fighting likewhite men. Rightfully proud that the Fifty-fourth had "established its reputation asa fighting regiment,55 Douglass told her, "not aman flinched. He understood the futility of the assaulteven ashe wanted more: "Men fell all around me. A shell would explode and clear a space of twenty feet, our men would close up again, but it wasno usewehad to retreat. . . . How I got out of that fight alive I cannot tell, but I amhere.. .. Remember ifI dieI dieina good cause. I wish we had a hundred thousand colored troops we would put an end to this war.551 Inside and outside ofthe hospital tents, Dr. Ripley Stone treated the injured, sending the more seriouslywounded to the better-staffed medicalfacilities near Beaufort. There, Charlotte Forten left her schoolhouse duties to help nurse the men. When news of the battle reached her, Forten put her thoughts in her journal: "It istoo terrible, too terrible to write. Weonly hope it maynot allbe true. That our noble, beautiful young Colonel iskilled and the reg[iment] cut to pieces! I cannot, cannot believeit But oh, I amstunned, sick at heart. I can scarcelywrite. . . .And oh, I still must hope that our colonel, ours especiallyhe seemsto me, isnot killed.55 Forten bolstered the wounded men'smorale and her own byrepeating the rumor— or hope—that Shaw "was not dead, but had beentakenprisoner bythe rebels."With that news,Forten recorded, "How joyfully their wan faces lighted up!55 A few days later, after receiving definite 42.* news of Shaw's fate, she confided to her journal that it "makes me sad, sad at heart I know it wasaglorious death."Forten alsogrievedfor Shaw's "young wife" and mother.2 On July 2.0, those who had not been wounded were at work again, cooperating with white regiments on guard duty and in digging the siegetrenches that would zig and zagthe Union line forward to Fort Wagnerand beyond, to Charleston. After three full days of scooping sand, the men closed the 1350yard separation to 400 yards. The day before Forten knew, confirmationof Shaw's death and burial reached the regiment as well as word that no black prisoners would be exchanged. Colonel M. S. Littlefield of the Fourth South Carolina (Colored) Infantry assumed temporary command of the regiment. Toward the end of the month, Norwood Hallowell arrivedwith the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts, camped on Folly Island, and undoubtedly raised spirits with news from home, consolations, and praise.At the same time, Brig.-Gen. Edward Wild's First North Carolina Colored Infantry increased spirits bybringing more black fighting men into position against the Charleston defenses.3 Still, the birthplace ofthe rebellion would not yieldto Union pressureuntil February 1865, eventhough the siegeagainstWagnerbrought the fort's evacuation on September 7. Bythat time, fifty-eight daysafter the assault,the daily bombardment byUnion monitors and land batterieshad raised, in the words of a Confederate defender, "an intolerable stench from the unearthed dead." The Confederatesclimbed aboard boats and left Fort Wagner to Union troops.4 The men of the Fifty-fourth walkedinto this ground hallowed bytheir comrades ' livesand by their efforts to gain respect as men of war. Perhaps expressing best what most believed, Lt. Wilkie James,twicewounded in the assault, wrote that Wagner"was the culmination of our hopes and our toils, the point above all other points to which we had been climbing from the moment the negro soldier at Readville took the musket in his hand."While proud, the men worried overwhatthe Confederatesmight...